Anita Earls

Anita Earls is an Associate Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, having been elected to an eight-year term in 2018. Before her judicial service, she was a prominent civil rights attorney for 30 years. Earls founded and led the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization. She also served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Clinton administration. Her legal career has included extensive work in voting rights, school desegregation, and police misconduct cases. Earls earned her bachelor's degree from Williams College and her J.D. from Yale Law School. She has taught at the University of North Carolina and University of Maryland law schools, as well as at Duke University.