North Carolina Lawyers Weekly
A parole board is not required to consider age-related mitigating characteristics of a defendant who was sentenced in 1988 when he was 17, to life with the possibility of parole. While the Supreme Court has addressed the sentencing of minors ...
Read More »Constitutional—Parole board needn’t consider age characteristics
Constitutional – High-school unit on Islam did not violate Constitution 
A school did not violate the Establishment or Free Speech clauses by presenting an 11th-grade history unit that provided information about Islam, and tested a student’s understanding of that knowledge through a test. Background During the 2014-2015 school year, Caleigh ...
Read More »Constitutional – First Amendment rights not violated by revocation of privileges
Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights were not violated when a transit authority revoked their access to certain restricted property even though the revocation was made in retaliation to activities protected under the First Amendment. Background Plaintiff David McClure is the ...
Read More »Constitutional Cabinet – Appointments – Senate Confirmation – Separation of Powers
The positions of the governor’s cabinet were created by the General Assembly, not the North Carolina Constitution; it follows that the constitution does not prohibit Senate confirmation of cabinet members. Moreover, given the governor’s power to nominate, supervise, and terminate ...
Read More »Constitutional – First Amendment – Public Records Act – Sealed File – First Impression
In a civil case alleging the sexual abuse of juvenile plaintiffs, the court can protect the juveniles’ identities without sealing the entire court file. And while a criminal defendant’s right to a fair trial may justify a temporary sealing of ...
Read More »Constitutional – Gag order does not withstand constitutional scrutiny
A gag order imposed by the district court overseeing suits against the owners of hog farms breached basic First Amendment principles. Background Hundreds of plaintiffs have alleged that nearby hog farms associated with Murphy-Brown LLC are a private nuisance. Plaintiffs ...
Read More »Constitutional – Church Membership – Core Ecclesiastical Matter
Where plaintiffs complain that they were ousted from membership in the defendant-church, but where church membership is a core ecclesiastical matter, inquiry by this court into the matter is barred. We affirm the trial court’s grant of defendant’s motion to ...
Tagged with: Church membership
Read More »Constitutional – Search & Seizure – Daughter’s Tablet – Free Speech – Due Process
Even if plaintiff has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the tablet that he gave his daughter to take to school, such a right was not clearly established at the time sheriff’s detectives searched the tablet. The court grants defendants’ ...
Tagged with: search and seizure
Read More »Constitutional – Civil Penalty – Administrative – Environmental – Hog Farm Payments – Schools & School Boards
After hog farms sent millions of gallons of waste into North Carolina’s waterways, Smithfield Foods, Inc. and several of its subsidiaries entered into an agreement with our attorney general, pursuant to which the companies agreed to pay the state one ...
Tagged with: Civil Penalty
Read More »Constitutional – Expression not chilled by school’s initial inquiry
A university did not restrict or chill students’ speech by seeking their response to complaints that they had harassed others. The students, who’d sought and obtained university approval for a campus “Free Speech Event,” met with an official to discuss ...
Tagged with: Free Speech
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