ALAMANCE COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — The North Carolina Supreme Court will allow the ongoing lawsuit between the state and a Piedmont Triad race track to continue.
Ace Speedway, located in Elon, became national news in 2020 after the governor ordered them to shutter for not conforming to COVID-19 precautions in the early days of the pandemic in 2020. The speedway took the fight to court, suing the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services after being shut down with a temporary restraining order.
The owners appeared in court, calling the COVID-19 restrictions “a deathwish” for the business. A judge ruled in favor of the state, which Ace Speedway owners appealed. The Court of Appeals cleared the way for a lawsuit against Dr. Mandy Cohen on behalf of Ace Speedway to go forward in August 2022. Kody Kinsley replaced Cohen, who is now director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as a plaintiff.
The state moved to dismiss the case, but a court denied the motion. The North Carolina Court of Appeals agreed to uphold the decision, and, now, the state Supreme Court has agreed as well.
“The trial court properly denied the State’s motion to dismiss,” the North Carolina Supreme Court wrote on Friday. “We affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals, which in turn affirmed the trial court’s ruling.”
According to the document from the N.C. Supreme Court, “in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency and issued an executive order affecting outdoor venues such as stadiums, concert arenas, and racetracks. The executive order permitted these venues to stay open but limited attendance to only twenty-five people, regardless of the venue’s size.
“Robert Turner, who operated a racetrack in Alamance County known as Ace Speedway, spoke out against these restrictions and told the public that his racetrack would remain open for all attendees. This led to the series of events at issue in this lawsuit.
“These events concern matters that are controversial in contemporary politics. The legal issues in this appeal, by contrast, are so time-tested that they border on mundane. In our legal system, we treat the initial allegations in a lawsuit as true when assessing whether the case can move forward at the outset. It is only after the parties have had the opportunity to gather evidence from each other, and from other parties with knowledge about the case—that courts examine whether those allegations are true.”
The court notes that Turner’s allegations that Cooper or the NCDHHS pressured local law enforcement or county officials to force him to shut down Ace Speedway remain unproven, however. “The claims also allege that Governor Cooper took these actions not because there was an actual health hazard at the racetrack, but to punish Turner for speaking out, and that health officials did not take similar actions against other large outdoor venues whose owners did not openly criticize the Governor,” the court said.
The state Supreme Court judges said they “reject the State’s argument that Ace Speedway’s claims fail because the claims do not seek the least-intrusive remedy. That argument is not ripe for review. As we have repeated throughout this opinion, Ace Speedway’s allegations remain unproven. The case has barely begun. The only question reviewable at this early stage of the case is whether Ace Speedway has sufficiently alleged a valid Corum claim, thus piercing the State’s sovereign immunity and permitting it to bring the State into court to litigate the matter.
“The trial court correctly concluded that the claims are valid and therefore the State’s motion to dismiss must be denied. The Court of Appeals, in turn, properly affirmed that ruling.”
A “Corum” claim is based on a “a groundbreaking 1992 decision,” in which “the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in favor of [the plaintiff], holding that in the absence of an adequate state remedy, a person whose constitutional rights have been abridged has a direct claim against the State.”
Sovereign immunity refers to law that states that a government cannot be sued without its consent.
Ultimately, “the State cannot assert sovereign immunity as a defense to a valid Corum claim” so the courts will not dismiss the case and will allow the lawsuit will continue.
