Paul Newby’s leadership in North Carolina
November 15, 2025
| Friends, This week, the NC Ag Partnership is highlighting the exemplary service and leadership of North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby. Chief Justice Newby has built a distinguished record rooted in fairness, constitutional fidelity, and respect for the role of the judiciary. He has long been a strong supporter of North Carolina agriculture and rural communities, and we believe it is important to recognize the value of his steady, principled leadership. Because, at the end of the day, there’s little chance you’ll find this context in most news coverage. It doesn’t fit neatly into the narratives they typically highlight. With the help of legal experts and those familiar with the history of these cases, I’d like to provide clarity on the decisions and the context in which they were made. (As a reminder, North Carolinians elected a new Supreme Court majority in 2022.) We cannot ignore the previous Court majority’s last-minute legislating from the bench: In the final weeks before North Carolinians voted overwhelmingly to toss out the previous Court majority in November 2022, the lame-duck, ousted and outgoing majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court issued unprecedented decisions on voter ID and redistricting. These rulings overturned two centuries of established legal precedent, as they issued sweeping, unprecedented decisions on significant policy issues before the newly elected majority took over. These were described as “important rulings” by the Raleigh newspaper. The outgoing majority discarded long-standing legal principles in the voter ID case:North Carolinians voted to amend the state constitution to require voter ID in 2018, a measure that passed by a wide margin, including bipartisan support. Regardless, the ousted majority ruled the voter ID amendment as unconstitutional, ignoring the presumption that the legislature acts in good faith unless clear evidence of discrimination exists. The outgoing majority invented new, untested rules for redistricting: In 2022, the outgoing majority discarded the state’s new voting maps and replaced long-standing legal standards with untested mathematical formulas to measure whether maps were overly partisan. These formulas had never been used anywhere in the country, and the court didn’t explain how lawmakers could meet the new standard. Justice Newby artfully described this in detail. Longstanding procedural timing, not politics, allowed the newly seated majority on the Court to revisit the cases: Because the lame-duck justices issued their rulings just before leaving office, the losing side legally had 15 days to request a rehearing. The newly seated majority simply exercised that procedural right to reconsider the prior Court’s rushed, legally questionable decisions. Chief Justice Newby’s decision to revisit these cases has been mischaracterized as partisan, instead of an attempt to clarify the standards. Y’all, we won’t read this type of truth in the media, and that’s why public trust in the media is at yet another all-time low. Examples like these are why your involvement with the NC Ag Partnership is so important. The public will encounter narratives attempting to discredit a state leader, take it as fact, and never know that they were subject to media spin not grounded in the truth. We are especially sensitive to attacks on our judicial leaders because we understand how much impact they have on a farmer’s ability to operate and feed the country. We’ve mentioned this several times in the past few weeks, but the NC Supreme Court’s recent ruling about regulatory authority shows that overreach will be addressed and not upheld, and that special interest groups that are adversarial to agriculture will not be allowed to circumvent the law. The NC Ag Partnership will support a fair and honest judiciary that upholds the law and does not try to advocate from the bench. Chief Justice Newby is a model for applying the law justly, and we appreciate his support of agriculture. We appreciate Chief Justice Newby’s steady leadership and commitment to applying the law fairly – and without fear or favor. Best regards, |
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| Tori Rumenik Executive Director, North Carolina Ag Partnership |