EXCLUSIVE
SPEARMAN ATTORNEY “REGRETS”
TO DISMISS NAACP MEMBER LAWSUIT
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
The attorney for Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman has sent a “Notice of Intent to Voluntarily Dismiss….” the late civil and human rights leader’s lawsuit in Guilford County Superior Court against several members of the NAACP, effectively closing the case.
In a letter dated August 17th, Atty. Mark T Cummings of Greensboro sent the notice to attorney Robert E. Harrington of the Charlotte law firm of Robinson, Bradshaw and Hinson P.A.. The federal lawsuit targeted national NAACP Pres./CEO Derrick Johnson, national NAACP Chairman of the Trustee Board Leon Russell, NC NAACP Pres. Deborah Dicks Maxwell, Tennessee NAACP Conference Pres. Gloria Sweet-Love, Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP Pres. Corine Mack, Raleigh-Apex NAACP Gerald Givens and other members, accusing them of defamation, and civil conspiracy to have Dr. Spearman removed from office as NC NAACP president by allegedly rigging the October 2021 executive election of officers so that he would lose.
It was June 13th when this reporter first and exclusively reported that Rev. Dr. Spearman, former president of the NC NAACP, filed a lawsuit in Guilford County Superior Court, contending that “the Defendants conspired to have Plaintiff (Spearman) removed because of his support of victim of sexual harassment (Ms. Jazmyne Childs) who brought litigation against the National NAACP and an employee/member of the North Carolina State Conference NAACP (Rev. Curtis Gatewood) and because of Plaintiff’s growing national profile stemming from his many successful and high-profile activities on behalf of the People of North Carolina and the NC NAACP.”
Gatewood has denied the sexual harassment charge, and is not a defendant in Rev. Spearman’s lawsuit, though he is alluded to.
Rev. Spearman maintained that because he stood with Ms. Childs publicly when she tearfully accused Pres./CEO Johnson in 2019 of ignoring her repeated cries to suspend Rev. Gatewood after her 2017 sexual harassment allegations were confirmed by an external investigation, Spearman became a target for retribution.”
Cummings notes that since Rev. Spearman’s demise ”…sometime in or around” July 19th, that “…current North Carolina law does not allow for the prosecution of a Defamation Claim after the death of the complaining party.”
Spearman’s attorney continued, “Although we believe that this case would present a good-faith opportunity to test whether existing law should be changed in light of technological and other factors the make the sting of defamatory statements potent even after death, Dr. Spearman’s Estate, which is in the process of formal creation, is not in a position to litigate that issue, and will therefore consent to a voluntary dismissal of the Defamation Claim.”
That part of the letter was no surprise. Atty Cummings told this reporter several days after Dr. Spearman’s death that he would most likely be withdrawing the defamation portion of the lawsuit because North Carolina would not allow it, but intended to proceed with the civil conspiracy part.
However, in his letter to atty. Harrington, Cummings decides otherwise.
“Moreover, our firm believes that since a Civil Conspiracy Claim just be tied to an independent compensatory claim, and that the Defamation Claim (which would have satisfied this requirement) is not available under current North Carolina law, that claim must also be voluntarily dismissed.”
Atty. Cummings continued.
“ We do not come to this decision without great pain and deep regret because we believe the Defendants were responsible, and a Jury would have so found, for defaming Dr. Spearman, and conspiring against him to have him removed unconstitutionally from his Office as President of the North Carolina Conference of the NAACP. However, Dr. Spearman’s untimely (and still currently under investigation) death makes it impossible to litigate these claims against the Defendants.”
At press time Monday, there was no indication of a response from attorney Harrington. He had previously sought to have the Spearman lawsuit moved to federal court for the Middle District of North Carolina.
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REPUBLICANS FURIOUS WITH NC
SUPREME COURT VOTER ID RULING
By Cash Michaels
An analysis
The title of a recent TV station editorial said it all regarding the NC Supreme Court’s most recent landmark ruling:
ILLEGAL LEGISLATORS CAN’T ENACT LEGAL LAWS.
Indeed the editorial followed up by asking a basic question Democrats on the state’s High Court apparently asked themselves before rendering their stunning 4-3 August 19th decision: “Should legislators, improperly elected from judicially ruled illegal racially gerrymandered districts, be able to enact laws that perpetuate racial discrimination?”
The four Democrats on the state’s highest court essentially said “ of course not,” but left it to a lower court to further do the research to put a definitive exclamation point on it.
The case was brought by the NC NAACP under the late Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman’s leadership after the Republican-led NC General Assembly in 2018 rushed to get six constitutional amendments to the state Constitution on the ballot for ratification by the voters. Two of the amendment involved mandating that voter ID would be the law in North Carolina, and that income taxes could not go beyond a 7% cap.
Both constitutional amendments passed, and the GOP legislative majority wasted no time in ratifying a law requiring voter ID for all future elections.
“The amendments were passed by a three-fifths majority of both chambers of the legislature; but the voter ID amendment only passed by two votes in the state House of Representatives and three in the Senate,” reported the Daily Wire.
The Republican scheme to permanently codify voter photo identification in North Carolina law worked, until the NC NAACP brought suit charging that the legislative action was unconstitutional because many of the Republican lawmakers who voted to ratify it were from voting districts that the US Supreme Court had previously deemed unconstitutional in 2016 because those districts were racially gerrymandered.
Thus, at least 28 GOP lawmakers had been illegally been elected, and should not have been able to serve, let alone vote in the NC legislature in 2018.
“Critical here is the fact that the legislature was conducting official business and passing laws even though it knew many of its members were not legally elected to represent their districts. Since the legislature didn’t act on its own to alleviate this flaw it was left to citizens – like those who have challenged the state’s Voter ID laws – to make sure actions of an illegally-constituted General Assembly were appropriately reviewed,” the WRAL-TV editorial stated.
A Wake Superior Court judge agreed in 2019, however the Republican-led NC Court of Appeals reversed that decision. That’s when Rev. Dr. Spearman and the NC NAACP appealed to the NC Supreme Court, which rendered the momentous 4-3 decision last week.
NC Supreme Court Associate Justice Anita Earls wrote for the majority, “…what makes this case so unique is that the General Assembly, acting with the knowledge that 28 of its districts were unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered and that more than two-thirds of all legislative districts needed to be redrawn to achieve compliance with the Equal Protection Clause, chose to initiate the process of amending the state constitution.”
Now, the same Wake Superior Court Judge, Bryan Collins, who originally ruled in the NC NAACP’s favor, has been tasked to factually justify undoing the constitutional amendments that were passed by voters. His 2019 ruling was deemed “too broad” by the Democrat justices, because it “…should have examined … whether the legislature was composed of a sufficient number of legislators elected from unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts—or from districts that were made possible by the unconstitutional gerrymander—such that the votes of those legislators could have been decisive in passing the challenged enactments … In this case, however, the record is clear that votes of legislators from unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts could have been decisive.”
As a result, Republicans and conservatives are more determined than ever to change the construct of the State Supreme Court this fall by defeating the two Democrats on the High Court in hopes of regaining the court majority, and then eventually overturning this ruling.
And if none of that works, the NC GOP hopes the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court will weigh-in down the road.
A right-wing website called “The Conservatives Post,” blasted the decision as a “…full-scale judicial coup.”
“Judges have no right to proclaim entire branches of government illegitimate, curtailing their elected powers, for what are purely partisan reasons, “ website continued. “These Democrats didn’t want voter ID enshrined, so they invented this ruling out of whole cloth, backed by absolutely nothing at all. It’s time to send them a message at the polls.”
Other outraged Republicans agreed.
“This party-line ruling is in direct contradiction to the rule of law and the will of the voters, opined NC House Speaker, Republican Tim Moore. ‘The people of North Carolina will not stand for the blatant judicial activism and misconduct that has seized our state’s highest court, and neither will I.”
The GOP are also determined to maintain legislative dominance in state government by winning more seats in the 2022 midterm elections thanks to recent redistricting, and the Governor’s Mansion in 2024.
And one of their top priorities - winning their pending voter ID court cases so that it becomes a permanent part of North Carolina law.
But first, they have to convince voters that Democrats are in the way.
“Four Democratic justices have all but thrown out the legitimate votes of millions of North Carolinians in a brazen, partisan attempt to remove the voter ID requirement from our Constitution and deny the people the ability to amend their own Constitution,” a statement from Sen. Paul Newton, the Republican chair of the Senate Redistricting and Elections Committee, stated.
“This is a direct attack on our democratic form of government from the most activist court in the state’s history.”
However, Rev. Dr. Spearman’s successor current NC NAACP President Deborah Dicks Maxwell, said, “Rigging elections by trampling on the rights of Black voters has consequences. No legislature has the right to use racially gerrymandered maps — infecting more than two-thirds of the districts of this state — to steal power from the people to change our state’s constitution.”
Meanwhile, the NC Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in another voter ID lawsuit on an accelerated appeal, because of claims that the 2018 voter ID law discriminated against African-American voters.
Republicans wanted the GOP-dominated NC Appellate Court to hear the case first because that would essentially eat up a calendar year and put any NC High Court review well after the 2022 midterms.
But the NC justices said “no,” they’ll hear it now.
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