Speaker Date: March 3, 2023
What is the current status of racial equity in North Carolina’s Criminal and Civil Justice systems? This presentation will include snapshots of data that address that question as well as information about efforts in various communities across the state to bring about greater equity.
This includes information about the work of the Governor’s Task Force on Racial Equity in Criminal Justice and the Chief Justice’s Equal Access to Justice Commission.
On-Demand Streaming Video
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Anita Earls
Associate Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court

BIOGRAPHY
Anita Earls is an Associate Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Before taking office on January 1, 2019, she was a civil rights attorney litigating voting rights, police misconduct and other civil rights cases for 30 years.
Anita was the founder and Executive Director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a non-profit legal advocacy organization in Durham, North Carolina. Appointed by President Clinton, Anita was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division from 1998 to 2000.
She has served on the North Carolina State Board of Elections, the North Carolina Equal Access to Justice Commission and currently Co-Chairs the Governor’s Task Force on Racial Equity in Criminal Justice. Anita has taught as an adjunct professor at UNC and University of Maryland Law Schools and in the African and African-American Studies Department at Duke University. A graduate of Yale Law School and Williams College, Anita lives in Durham with her husband Charles Walton. She has two grown sons and two grandchildren.