ASSOCIATE JUSTICE PHIL BERGER JR
GOP JUSTICES ASKED TO
RECUSE THEMSELVES IN
VOTER ID CASE
By Cash Michaels
If your father is one of the principals in a major voter ID case coming before your court, should you stand down, rather than raising questions about your court’s impartiality?
That’s the question NC Supreme Court Associate Justice Phil Berger Jr. is facing in the case of NAACP v. Moore and Berger. An order was issued last week for legal briefs dealing with questions about the recusal of two associate justices in the matter. Berger Jr. is one of them.
Justice Berger Jr.’s ability to fairly judge NAACP v. Moore and Berger is at question because one of the defendants named is NC Senate Pro Tem Phil Berger Sr., his father. The NCNAACP has petitioned the court for Berger Jr. to be recused since h won’t do it himself.. The state’s judicial ethics code of ethics requires him to do so if a case involves a close family member, or even the appearance of conflict of interest, but thus far, Berger Jr. shows no signs of stepping off.
Justice Berger Jr. reportedly argues that he should remain because his father is being sued in his official, not personal capacity.
The case - the NC NAACP suing the Republican-led NC General Assembly under legislative leadership of Berger Sr. and House Speaker Tim Moore - is over passage of the 2018 voter ID amendment which the NC NAACP maintains the legislature was not legally empowered to ratify, nor the law derived from it valid, because the federal courts had previously ruled that 28 of the voting districts that that legislature was constituted of were illegal racial gerrymanders.
At issue per Associate Berger Jr. recusing himself in this case, is whether the NC High Court has the authority to involuntarily require him to do so. The stakes are high because the NC Supreme Court has a 4-3 Democrat/Republican split.
If Berger Jr. is removed, then at least one GOP conservative judge will not hear the case, and conservatives are desperately trying to keep that from happening.
They also very much want Berger Jr. to stay put so that not only the voter ID amendment, but the 2018 voter ID law that it is based on, remains intact.
Interestingly, this is all happening after a three-judge state Superior Court panel ruled recently that the 2018 voter ID law was unconstitutional because of it’s negative affect against black and brown voters. That ruling is expected to be appealed.
Justice Berger Jr. isn’t the only Republican associate justice on the recusal hot seat. Associate Justice Tamara Barringer is a Republican former state senator who served right before being elected to the state Supreme Court in 2020. She also is facing questions about her ability to fairly rule, given her previous legislative involvement in voting for the 2018 voter ID amendment, and law.
The oral argument in NAACP v. Moore before the state Supreme Court was pulled from the court calendar in late August when neither Berger Jr nor Barringer responded to recusal inquiries, thus putting the rest of the court in the position of having to decide for them.
Ultimately, if justices Berger Jr and Barringer are forced to recuse themselves, the High Court’s 4-3 partisan split dramatically drops to 4-1 for this case, setting a precedent that could automatically affect subsequent cases.
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BLACK WOMEN REMAIN
AMONG HIGHEST RISK
FOR BREAST CANCER
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
This National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, as in months and years before, the troubling numbers are virtually the same - black women remain among the highest at risk of dying of metastatic stage four breast cancer in North Carolina, and across the United States.
In fact, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), black women are 40 percent more likely to die here in the South particularly, because of breast cancer.
Between 2005-2009, breast cancer is the second leading leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United States, adds the CDC (as of 2018, black people, male and female, lead in dying of all cancers in North Carolina, according to U.S. Cancer Statistics).
In just new breast cancer cases alone between 2004-2018 according to Susan G. Komen Cancer Research, white women were 131.8 cases per 100,000, while black women were 124.7 cases per 100,000 (interestingly, Asian/Pacific Islanders were 105.1, Hispanic were 100.3, and Native American/Alaskan Native were just 81.7 per 100,000)
From the same source, white women had a 13 percent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer; black women - 12%. (Asian/Pacific Islander - 11%; Hispanic - 11%; and Native American/Alaskan Native - 8%.).
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in it’s 2020 report about racial and ethnic cancer disparities noted, “While the breast cancer rate has been lower among Black women than white women for several decades, it has been rising steadily in recent years, and the rate is now similar among the two populations. For women under the age of 40, the breast cancer rate is higher among Black women than it is for any other racial or ethnic group.”
CDC notes that the rate of breast cancer deaths for white women are falling, while the rate for black women is rising.
And why are there different rates of developing breast cancers? What is known, based on research, is the age at first period; age of menopause; age at first childbirth; body weight; breastfeeding; number of childbirths, and menopausal hormone therapy.
With black women specifically, they have a slightly lower rate of breast cancer than their white counterparts overall, and yet among women 15 - 39 in 2018, younger black women had more of a prevalence towards breast cancer the whites.
In North Carolina, as is across states like Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee, black women have an over 40 % likelihood of dying of breast cancer because while treatment in general has improved, researchers haven’t developed treatments for a series of aggressive tumors that black woman are most likely to have, known as TNBC - triple-negative breast cancer.
Reportedly there is also a lack of diversity in clinical trials.
Add to this an historic, if not traditional, ostracizing that black women have pointed to from the medical community that ultimately makes many of them distrustful, and forestalls them from getting the proper timely treatment.
Another factor - black women, more likely than not, are working low wage jobs with no health benefits, meaning that they simply can’t afford the life saving treatments, and don’t have the time to go to the doctor regularly even if they could.en
For those that do get necessary followup care, studies show that black women get their’s later than white women.
Put all of the above together, and black women, according to the CDC, have 38 more deaths per breast cancer cases than white women in North Carolina.
The American Cancer Society urges all women between the ages of 40 - 44 (women can actually start a few years before age 40) to begin screening tests for early detection. The earlier breast cancer is discovered, the more effective treatment can be, doctors say, because it will not have the opportunity to spread to the rest of the body.
Women 45 to 54 should get a mammogram every year.
More information on breast cancer is available at cancer.gov/breast. Information specialists at the National Cancer Institute are also available to help answer cancer-related questions in English and Spanish at 1-800-422-6237.
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REV. DR. WILLIAM BARBER DELIVERS ADDRESS AT THE VATICAN
[ROME] Rev. Dr. William Barber, president of Repairers of the breach, and co-chair of the Poor People’s campaign, delivered remarks at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences Conference at the Vatican this week about the church’s role in combating worldwide poverty. Rev. Barber said h was ‘moved” to have been selected to speak by Pope Francis. This is the second time Rev. Barber has been to the Vatican since 2017.
GOV. COOPER CHOOSES ELIZABETH CITY POLICE CHIEF AS NEW HEAD OF NC DPS
[RALEIGH] The new head of the NC Dept. of Public Safety is Elizabeth City Police Chief Eddie Buffaloe. Buffaloe replaces Secretary Erik Hooks, who stepped down several weeks ago to take a position in the Biden Administration. Buffaloe will oversee the State Bureau of Investigation, the NC prison system, the NC Highway Patrol and the NC National Guard. Buffaloe also served as interim city manager in Elizabeth City.
PRES. BIDEN TAPS TWO BLACK WOMEN FOR U.S. ATTORNEYS IN NC
[WINSTON-SALEM] Pres. Joe Biden has nominated two African-American women to be confirmed as U.S. attorneys in North Carolina. In the Western District, Dena King was chosen to oversee federal prosecutions in Charlotte and 32 counties. Sandra Hairston was chosen to become U.S. attorney for the Middle District, encompassing Greensboro and 24 counties in the middle of the state. She has been acting U.S. attorney since March. Both have met with Republican senators Richard Burr and Them Tillis, and have gotten their approval. King and Hairston are both graduates of North Carolina Central University Law School, and have both served as assistant district attorneys in North Carolina.
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