On this episode of Legal Magnolias, hosts Maggie and Sonya talk with North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls about her campaign to remain on the state's highest court and why so many of the rights people care about now rest with state courts rather than federal ones. Justice Earls walks through her path from civil rights litigator to the bench and why she ran for the state's highest court directly rather than working her way up through the lower courts.

The conversation covers a lot of ground: the Leandro decision and the state's constitutional promise of a "sound basic education," a utilities ruling that lets North Carolinians in different parts of the state pay different rates for the same power, and why Justice Earls has written an unusually high number of dissents in recent years. She also breaks down how partisan gerrymandering actually works, why state supreme court races are decided by razor-thin margins, and why she believes judicial independence should be what voters weigh when they get to that part of the ballot. In eloquent and simple terms, Justice Earls reminds us how and why every vote matters.

About the guest

Justice Anita Earls has served on the North Carolina Supreme Court since 2018, when she became the first justice elected in the court's newly partisan elections. Before taking the bench, she practiced civil rights law, including at the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, and founded the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, where she worked for over a decade before running for the state's highest court. On the bench, she has become known for detailed, plainly written dissents on redistricting, environmental protection, and utility regulation, and for her advocacy around judicial independence and voter turnout in down-ballot races. She is currently seeking re-election to her seat this November. Learn more: https://earls4justice.com/

Legal Magnolias is a podcast from Magnolia Legal in Durham, North Carolina — hosted by Sonya Linton and Maggie Davis. Follow the show on LinkedIn and Facebook. Learn more about the firm at magnolialegal.com.

Music by Tim Sheahan | Everyday Knife Fight | Chapel Hill, NC

Produced by Sara Hofman | McNeely Web Design | Raleigh, NC

Enjoying the podcast? Please leave us a review — it genuinely helps our audience find us.

On this episode of Legal Magnolias, hosts Maggie and Sonya talk with Jen Story, a longtime friend of Maggie's from law school and supervising attorney at Campbell Law School's Richardson Family Education Equity Clinic, about what North Carolina actually owes its kids in a classroom. Jen walks through why the state's constitution guarantees every child a "sound basic education," why a case testing that promise has been in court since the 1990s, and what happens when a legislature simply doesn't release the funding a court says it owes.

She also gets into some of the assumptions that turn out to be wrong: why moving a child with a disability into a "special" classroom can violate the law even when it's meant well, why suspending a struggling student often makes the underlying problem worse instead of better, and how one small rural county ended up with three school districts a few miles apart, each funded completely differently.

About the guest

Jen spent years representing students and families against the school districts failing them, first at Legal Aid's Right to Education Project and now at Campbell Law. It's a conversation about what it actually costs to make a constitutional right real, and why Jen — after decades in this fight — still calls herself hopeful.

Learn more about Jen Story and the Richardson Family Education Equity Clinic here.

Legal Magnolias is a podcast from Magnolia Legal in Durham, North Carolina — hosted by Sonya Linton and Maggie Davis. Follow the show on LinkedIn and Facebook. Learn more about the firm at magnolialegal.com.

Music by Tim Sheahan | Everyday Knife Fight | Chapel Hill, NC

Produced by Sara Hofman | McNeely Web Design | Raleigh, NC

Enjoying the podcast? Please leave us a review — it genuinely helps our audience find us.

On this episode of Legal Magnolias, hosts Maggie and Sonya talk with Meredith Nicholson and Milan Pham about representing LGBTQ+ families in North Carolina, before, during, and after marriage equality. Meredith and Milan walk through some of the assumptions that turn out to be wrong, like why having your name on your child's birth certificate doesn't automatically make you their legal parent, or how families protected each other through ordinary contracts years before marriage was ever an option. They also get into the practical, less obvious side of the work: rewriting wills and estate planning documents so they don't assume every client fits neatly into "husband" and "wife," and what's changing right now in how families are planning for the future.

Today, their Durham firm, NicholsonPham, is one of North Carolina's go-to practices for LGBTQ+ families navigating marriage, parentage, adoption, and estate planning, handled by attorneys who are part of the community they represent.

Meredith and Milan also talk about allyship in a more personal way — what it's meant for Meredith to grow into that role through her law partnership with Milan, and how Milan describes allyship as an open door that not everyone chooses to walk through.

It's a conversation about how much of family law most of us have never had to think about — until, suddenly, we do.

Learn more about Meredith, Milan, and NicholsonPham: https://nicholsonpham.com/

Legal Magnolias is a podcast from Magnolia Legal in Durham, North Carolina — hosted by Sonya Linton and Maggie Davis. Follow the show on LinkedIn and Facebook. Learn more about the firm at magnolialegal.com.

Music by Tim Sheahan | Everyday Knife Fight | Chapel Hill, NC

Produced by Sara Hofman | McNeely Web Design | Raleigh, NC

Enjoying the podcast? Please leave us a review — it genuinely helps our audience find us.