2022 North Carolina Supreme Court Voters Guide

Judge Richard Dietz currently serves as a judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, a position he has held since 2014. Previously, Dietz was a partner at the law firm of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, working as an appellate litigator.Dietz holds a degree in business from Shippensburg University, a law degree from Wake Forest University School of Law, and a master’s degree in judicial studies from Duke University.

Judge Lucy Inman currently serves as a judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, a position she has held since 2014. Previously, Inman served as a special North Carolina Superior Court judge, after working as a civil litigator in private practice.Inman holds a degree in English from N.C. State University and a law degree from the University of North Carolina.

• In a February 2022 land use appeal, Dietz wrote that in the face of zoning ordinances that were “convoluted, conflicting, ambiguous,” the issue must be resolved “in favor of the free use of property.”

• As a Superior Court judge in 2011, Inman upheld the Felony Firearms Act on the basis that a court should not interfere with the legislature’s judgment, when there was a rational connection between the legislature’s goal of public safety and the Act, which limited gun ownership rights for felons whose crimes involved firearms.
• On the North Carolina Court of Appeals, in 2017 Inman voted with the majority to find that the responsibility to provide a sound basic education to North Carolina students rests with the state, not individual counties.

• Dietz said, “Because judges can wield significant power in our society, they must commit to upholding the law and rejecting the temptation to decide cases on the basis of their policy preferences…’We the People’ ratified our fundamental rights, and the limits on government, and the role of judges is to enforce and protect what the people enshrined in the Constitution.”
• He said, “the single most important job the Supreme Court can do is maintain the certainty and stability that we have in our jurisprudence,” that the law should not “swing back and forth based on the composition of the Supreme Court.”
• Regarding the decision to make North Carolina judicial elections partisan, Dietz said, “I don’t think the party labels have any impact on the work judges do on the court. I strongly believe the public supports the idea of nonpartisan judges, but what that means is judges who don’t act like partisan politicians.”

• Inman wrote that when judges are deciding new issues, they “must work to protect the rights provided by the Constitution from specific infringements that the original authors could not have anticipated,” and that “it may be appropriate to consider the context of present culture in attempting to determine how the founders would have resolved such an issue.”
• She said, “The United States Constitution and the North Carolina Constitution require equal protection under the law for everyone. Despite these principles, racial bias is ingrained in our institutional history, including our statutory and case law. Acknowledging systemic racism does not require attributing ill will or racist intent to any person working in our criminal justice system today. Denying the problem prevents us from addressing it and undermines public confidence in our justice system.”
• Regarding the decision to make North Carolina judicial elections partisan, Inman said, “Party labels in judicial elections have harmed North Carolina’s judicial system by giving political parties greater influence in the judicial branch and creating a barrier to judicial candidates who are not affiliated with any political party.”

Dietz has been endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge #9 and the North Carolina Values Coalition, which supports the values of “life, family, and religious freedom.”

Inman has been endorsed by EqualityNC, an LGBT+ rights organization, the NC Sierra Club, the North Carolina state AFL-CIO, and the National Association of Social Workers-NC.