The North Carolina State Bar is refusing to comply with a legislative oversight committee’s request for a list of Bar employees’ political affiliations and political contributions dating back over a decade — a stance that raised tensions Tuesday during a state legislative hearing.
The State Bar Grievance Review Committee, which the Republican-led state legislature created last year to investigate allegations of cancel culture against Republican lawyers, made the request in a letter earlier this month. The State Bar, which is in charge of licensing and disciplining North Carolina’s lawyers, refused that request. The Bar said it doesn’t — and wouldn’t — track its employees’ political activity or beliefs.
“Their job responsibilities as civil servants are apolitical,” the refusal letter said. “… The State Bar does not inquire into or maintain the information you requested about the constitutionally protected political expression of State Bar employees and councilors.”
The committee is unlike most legislative committees in that it is run by political appointees, not elected legislators. It was authorized by Republican legislative leaders and is led by Woody White, a Republican activist and former state senator from Wilmington; and Lawrence Shaheen, a Republican political operative from Charlotte. The committee’s other permanent members are Supreme Court Justice Tamara Barringer, a Republican who previously served in the state Senate; Court of Appeals Judge Valerie Zachery, a Republican whose husband is also a Republican politician; and Andrew Heath, a lobbyist and former top aide to Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.
Tuesday’s hearing underscored tensions between the Bar and the committee. The committee’s leaders expressed frustration and surprise that media outlets, including WRAL News, had obtained a copy of the Bar’s refusal letter ahead of the hearing. Committee leaders had wanted the letter to remain a secret.
“That letter was privately transmitted to the Bar,” Shaheen said. “That letter was then transmitted back to us. I received a call from a reporter about that letter. So someone — don’t know who; wasn’t us — decided to make that an issue today.”
Shaheen said during the meeting that he never meant the request for data about the Bar’s employees’ political affiliations and campaign contributions to have been partisan in nature. In an interview after the meeting, however, Shaheen said he believes the Bar has engaged in cancel culture against Republican lawyers for their political views.
He declined to provide any proof or other specifics. “That’s what we’re investigating, so we’ll be sure to let you know,” Shaheen said.
The Bar’s executive director declined to comment after the meeting, beyond what he had written in the refusal letter declining the request for the Bar’s request for political information.
Most of the committee’s other members had little to say during Tuesday’s hearing. But while the permanent committee members are Republicans, it is also legally required to allow a representative of the Bar to sit on the committee, too. That position rotates but is currently held by Kevin Williams, a corporate lawyer from Winston-Salem who is a Democrat. He had quite a bit to say about the letter, which he said was even kept secret from him and other members of the committee, and which he viewed as improper.
“I am a little bit troubled by the letter that was sent to the State Bar asking for political affiliations of State Bar staff and attorneys, and their political contributions,” said Williams, who serves as the Bar’s president-elect. “That feels partisan to me.”
White defended the request, asking Williams if he was interested in knowing whether or not the Bar’s employees tend to lean more in one political direction or another. Williams said he wasn’t, and he suggested that even asking that question could be breaking the law.
“I don’t,” Williams said. “I’m not even sure it’s a legal question, to be perfectly honest about it.”
He added that in his decade working with the State Bar, he has never known the political affiliation of any of its staff — or any of the lawyers facing disciplinary actions whose cases he has helped review.
“Not once in 10 years have I ever heard politics creep into a discussion about any lawyer coming before the grievance committee,” Williams said.
The Bar is an independent state agency; it chooses its own leaders rather than reporting to elected officials, and it’s funded by dues paid by lawyers rather than by taxpayer dollars. Its letter refusing to collect data on its workers’ political beliefs cited a state personnel law that requires most state employees to be hired “without regard to political affiliation or political influence.”