State expands eCourts to 11 western counties Monday

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  • North Carolina's eCourts expansion extends to 11 western counties Monday. The expansion brings the total number of eCourts counties to 38. They include roughly half of the state's population.
  • The next eCourts expansion will feature 11 "southern and central Piedmont" counties on Oct. 14.
  • The eCourts system continues to expand as a federal lawsuit challenges the program's rollout. The suit targets eCourts vendor Tyler Technologies and sheriffs in Wake and Mecklenburg counties.

Eleven western North Carolina counties switch from paper to digital court records Monday in the state’s latest eCourts expansion. The latest additions mark the halfway point for a 10-track expansion project that will extend into 2025.

Buncombe, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Polk, Swain, and Transylvania counties are all converting to eCourts digital court records.

Western counties are moving to digital court records after the state’s easternmost counties switched to eCourts in February. “This eCourts milestone highlights the diverse landscapes of our great state — connecting citizens from Murphy to Manteo — as historic progress replacing isolated paper files with digital court records reaches the westernmost regions of North Carolina,” said Ryan Boyce, director of the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts, in a news release.

Reaching 38 counties, eCourts will now serve about half of the state’s population. They include residents of Charlotte, the Triangle, and the Triad. “More than 1 million electronic filings have been accepted through eCourts, saving an estimated 4 million pieces of paper since February 2023,” according to the AOC news release.

Another group of 11 counties in the “southern and central Piedmont regions” of North Carolina will switch to eCourts on Oct. 14, AOC has announced.

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.

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