Bill could delay future NC governors' efforts to replace retiring appellate judges

At least two prominent Republican judges won’t be forced to retire in the next few years, if a bill filed in the North Carolina House becomes law.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby turns 72 — the state’s mandatory retirement age for judges — in 2027. Court of Appeals Judge John Tyson turns 72 in 2025.

State law says that if there’s a vacancy on the bench, the governor gets to appoint a replacement judge. That means that if the Democratic Party’s nominee wins next year’s election for governor, then he or she would have the chance to flip both Tyson’s and Newby’s important judicial seats from red to blue.

Republicans currently maintain the majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court and state Court of Appeals. But the impending retirements could potentially help Democrats cut into the GOP majorities, if the party does win the 2024 governor’s race. Republicans have a 5-2 Supreme Court majority and an 11-4 Court of Appeals majority.

And while those high-ranking judicial seats are the ones that capture the most attention, they’re not the only positions this bill would affect. Every judge and magistrate in the state would have his or her retirement age raised from 72 to 76 if the bill passes.

Republican Rep. Sarah Stevens, one of the top-ranking Republicans in the House and a lead sponsor of the bill, said in an email that she was asked to write it by people in the legislative and judicial branches.

The state courts system itself didn’t formally request the bill, but the system is in favor of it, according to a system representative, who added that this isn’t the first time such a proposal has come up at the legislature.

“Several bills to raise the judicial retirement age have been filed in recent years, and [the Administrative Office of the Courts] is generally supportive,” said Graham Wilson, the spokesman for the judicial branch.

The bill could also take some power away from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, as he enters the second half of his final term as governor. Cooper has appointed numerous local judges all across the state in his time as governor. It wasn’t immediately clear how many local judges who are currently 70 or 71 would be prevented from having to step down in the next year or two, if this bill becomes law.

A spokesperson for Cooper didn’t respond to a request for comment about the bill.

Republican lawmakers have targeted Cooper’s ability to appoint judges in the past, like with a controversial bill several years ago that would have shrunk the size of the Court of Appeals specifically to stop Cooper, during his first term as governor, from being able to replace three Republican judges nearing retirement age.

After that bill was initially introduced, one of those Republican judges nearing retirement age announced he would retire early, just before the bill became law, so that Cooper could replace him with a Democrat. That judge, Doug McCullough, said he did so in protest of what he saw as an improper politicization of the court.

GOP lawmakers later backed off on that proposal, following widespread criticism. But Republicans have been successful in gaining more control of the courts through elections, sweeping every single statewide judicial race in both 2020 and 2022.

Since winning control of the state legislature in 2011, Republicans have also changed state elections laws intended to further cement their party’s chances in judicial elections. One new law allowed judicial candidates to raise unlimited amounts of money. Another new law changed judicial races from nonpartisan to partisan.