- The state court system announced Monday two more go-live dates in 2025 for eCourts expansion. Thirteen southeastern counties will switch from paper to digital court records on Feb. 3. Eleven north central counties will join eCourts on April 28.
- Courts in all 100 counties should be linked to eCourts by October 2025, state officials announced.
- Once all counties are on board, eCourts will head next to the North Carolina Business Court.
North Carolina’s court system announced Monday two more go-live dates for eCourts expansion. Court officials also confirmed that eCourts will reach all 100 counties by October 2025, with the state Business Court targeted after local county courts join the system.
Operating now in 38 counties and reaching nearly half the state’s population, eCourts will extend to another 11 counties in the southern and central Piedmont — stretching from east of Charlotte to Fayetteville — on Oct. 14.
Court officials in 13 southeastern counties learned Monday that their official eCourts implementation date is Feb. 3, 2025. Eleven counties in north central North Carolina will switch from paper to digital court records on April 28, 2025.
Remaining counties will convert to eCourts in July and October next year. Specific dates have not been announced. Those counties will complete the program’s 10-track rollout, with the North Carolina Business Court announced Monday as track 11.
“Millions of electronic filings and online records searches have dramatically reduced the intake of paper into the court system during the expansion, connecting citizens to public records online 24/7 instead of limiting access to in-person visits during business hours for paper files,” according to a news release from Administrative Office of the Courts.
“The Business Court looks forward to transitioning its case filing system into eCourts, thereby completing the creation of a unified electronic filing system for civil cases in the state’s 100 counties,” said Chief Judge Louis Bledsoe and Judge Michael Robinson of the North Carolina Business Court in the AOC release.
“Millions more North Carolinians will benefit from the convenience of digital access to their courthouse in 2025 as momentum builds for statewide completion of the historic eCourts transition in the Judicial Branch,” said Ryan Boyce, AOC director.
Court officials revealed in March that taxpayers will save more than $6 million from the original 10-year eCourts contract. The court system also extended the contract by another five years, with cost increases capped at 3% per year.
The original eCourts contract with Texas-based vendor Tyler Technologies called for roughly $100 million of spending over 10 years from 2019 to 2029.
Now that original bill will decrease by $6,139,083, according to documents reviewed by Carolina Journal. The lower bill accounts for “vendor implementation delays,” according to the documents.
“Reducing the cost of North Carolina’s eCourts contract by more than $6 million holds the vendor accountable for implementation delays while maximizing the public benefits of this historic transition from paper court records to electronic access and filings,” Boyce said.
The same contract amendment extended the agreement with Tyler Technologies through 2034. Fixed pricing in the extended contract is designed to “protect taxpayers against variable price escalations in inflationary economic and technology environments,” according to documents.
Regardless of the extension, AOC reserved the right to terminate the contract “at any time for cause or convenience.”
Enterprise Justice is the official name of the program extending eCourts to counties across the state.
The eCourts expansion proceeds as a federal lawsuit continues to target the system’s rollout.
Plaintiffs challenging eCourts implementation in North Carolina dropped state and local court officials from the list of defendants in May. A court filing confirmed that all 13 plaintiffs in the eCourts suit agreed to dismiss complaints against five defendants.
The voluntary dismissal removed Boyce and Brad Fowler from the case. Fowler is AOC’s chief business officer and eCourts “executive sponsor.”
The dismissal also removed three county clerks of Superior Court from the case: Elisa Chinn-Gary of Mecklenburg County, Blair Williams of Wake County, and Susie Thomas of Lee County.
Separate court filings revealed that one plaintiff, Paulino Castellanos, dropped his complaint against eCourts vendor Tyler Technologies and Lee County Sheriff Brian Estes.
Other plaintiffs continued to pursue their lawsuit against Tyler Technologies and the sheriffs of Mecklenburg and Wake counties.
A state lawyer defended the new eCourts program in a federal court filing in January.
“[E]Courts is the culmination of years of learning, planning, and training by numerous judicial stakeholders, including the Judicial Defendants named here,” wrote state Special Deputy Attorney General Elizabeth Curran O’Brien.
She represented Boyce, Fowler, and the court clerks.
“[T]he Judicial Defendants are committed to successfully implementing eCourts and enabling judicial officials, litigants, law enforcement officers, and others to conduct court business fairly and efficiently,” O’Brien wrote. “It is unclear what claims Plaintiffs bring against the Judicial Defendants and what relief they seek due to fundamental pleading deficiencies.”
“Further, it appears Plaintiffs appear to ask this Court to halt core public safety and court functions, with no identified alternative,” the motion continued. “This Court should decline to do so and dismiss all claims against Defendants.”
“Prior to the implementation of eCourts, North Carolina courts depended on paper filing, which provided multiple opportunities for error, and made courts slow and inefficient,” O’Brien wrote. “The transition to a digital court management system was a ‘long-term project covering many years and three judicial administrations.’”
The motion questioned plaintiffs’ attempts to block the eCourts rollout from moving forward. “Injunctive relief is available only against conduct violating the Constitution,” O’Brien wrote. “While the Amended Complaint repeatedly uses the conclusory terms ‘unlawful,’ ‘unconstitutional’ and ‘deprivation of liberty,’ it fails to sufficiently allege a violation of the Constitution, much less a violation of the Constitution directly involving Defendants Boyce or Fowler. Plaintiffs don’t even allege a federal right that Defendants Boyce and Fowler have violated.”
The motion referenced a common theme in the lawsuit’s complaints. “The majority of the allegations relate to orders for arrest that appeared valid in eWarrants, but were allegedly either already served, issued in a now dismissed case, recalled, or issued in error,” O’Brien wrote. “Plaintiff blames this upon negligence, either by the Sheriff Defendants and/or the Clerk Defendants, or by defects in the eCourts software.”
“However, detention pursuant to a facially valid warrant later determined to be served, recalled, or issued in error, does not, without more, violate due process, and thus is not constitutionally unlawful,” she added.