“Temporary” state employees who logged more than 12 consecutive months of work without benefits can move forward with a breach-of-contract lawsuit against the state, based on a ruling this morning from the N.C. Court of Appeals.
A three-judge panel unanimously reversed portions of a lower court ruling dismissing the temporary workers’ case, although the panel also upheld parts of the ruling that said the workers “failed to state valid claims under the
equal protection or fruits of their labor clauses of the North
Carolina Constitution.”
Meanwhile, the N.C. Court of Appeals has rejected the Graham County school board’s “random, suspicionless drug and alcohol testing of all
Board employees.”
A three-judge panel agreed the testing violated constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. In her opinion Judge Linda Stephens concludes:
Lest the American people, and the people
of North Carolina in particular, forget the
foundational importance of the Fourth
Amendment right to be secure against
unreasonable searches and seizures, we should
recall that the cherished liberties enjoyed in
our brief historical moment have been
inherited by this generation only because they
have been nurtured and protected by earlier
generations of Americans so driven in their
pursuit of liberty that life itself was not
too great a cost to purchase liberty for
themselves and their posterity.
In other news, the state’s second-highest court has issued opinions this morning that:
- reverse a lower court ruling and allow a medical malpractice case to proceed against Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, N.C. Baptist Hospital, and other defendants. The case involves the 2001 death of a 7-month-old boy with heart problems.
- reverse part of a lower court ruling to allow a plaintiff to pursue a class-action lawsuit against a Durham restaurant owner accused of sending thousands of unsolicited fax advertisements for his businesses.
- affirm most of a lower court ruling linked to a leadership dispute within the Meherrin Indian tribe.
