Justice Anita Earls is a civil rights attorney and experienced jurist who is running for reelection to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2026. 

Her values of justice, equality, and fairness for all were born of the struggle she experienced growing up in a mixed-race family at a time when interracial marriages were illegal in most of the country. 

These values and experiences guided Justice Earls’ career choices, leading her to fight for the rights of ordinary citizens across North Carolina in a wide range of civil rights cases. For over 30 years, she stood alongside people whose right to vote was denied, people who were mistreated at work, and the parents of children who were being denied equal educational opportunities, seeking equal justice under the law in state and federal courtrooms. 

President Clinton appointed her to be a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Returning to North Carolina, she worked alongside Julius Chambers at the UNC Center for Civil Rights and, in 2007, founded the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization that partners with historically marginalized communities across the South. After serving as the organization’s executive director for 10 years, Justice Anita Earls was elected to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2018. 

Now, as the only African American member of the Court, Justice Earls has continued to demonstrate her steadfast dedication to upholding the law by protecting the rights and freedoms of all North Carolinians – including access to healthcare, a sound basic public education, a clean environment, fairness in the marketplace, and the equal right to vote. 

Justice Earls lives in Durham, North Carolina with her husband Charles Walton. She has two sons and three grandchildren.