The Progressive Pulse: “The lawsuit NAACP v. Moore, filed in August 2018, named Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger Sr. and House Speaker Tim Moore as defendants. Since then, two state Supreme Court associate justices, Berger Jr. and Tamara Barringer, who have close connections to the defendants, have been elected to the state’s highest court in 2020.
Plaintiffs are questioning the impartiality of Berger Jr. and Barringer, and requesting their recusal.
Canon 3 of the North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct states, “A judge should perform the duties of the judge’s office impartially and diligently.”
It further explains that a judge should disqualify themselves when a person “within the third degree of relationship” to either themselves or their spouses is a part of the proceeding. The plaintiffs argued that Berger Jr. and his father Berger Sr. are within a first-degree relationship. However, the state Supreme Court itself wrote the Code of Judicial Conduct and has the authority over its scope and interpretation.
Berger Jr. has been a beneficiary of his father’s political clout in the state. His father’s appearance at an event helped him raise tens of thousands of dollars from lobbyists in his 2014 congressional bid, according to The News & Observer.
Plaintiffs said Justice Barringer has a potential conflict of interest, citing a state Supreme Court case that ruled “No judge should sit in [their] own case, or participate in a matter in which [they have] a personal interest, or [have] taken sides therein.”
Barringer served as a state Senator from 2013 to 2019. During the 2017–2018 sessions, she voted to pass the voter ID amendment bill and was thus a defendant in the case.”