When the state Supreme Court took up the case of Maurice Devalle, a state trooper-turned-Columbus County sheriff’s deputy accused of dishonesty, it seemed like the justices were primed to upend occupational licensing across North Carolina.
That’s not what happened.
In a decision penned by Chief Justice Paul Newby and published last month, the court declined to overhaul the definition of “good moral character,” a term often used in licensing requirements.
Newby acknowledged that the state and federal Supreme Courts have characterized the term as “unusually ambiguous” and “defin[able] in an almost unlimited number of ways.” But he put the onus of distilling the meaning from past court decisions on regulators—in this case, the Sheriffs’ Education and Training Standards Commission.
The Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission, which certifies police officers, has already begun rewriting its rules to include an itemization of behaviors that are prohibited. Cleveland County Sheriff Alan Norman, who chairs the sheriffs’ commission, told The News & Observer earlier this summer that his commission was considering doing the same.
Newby and his fellow Republican justices agreed that Devalle violated the standard and that the sheriff’s commission was justified in denying him certification to work as a sheriff’s deputy, saying he had been “evasive” at a hearing “specifically conducted to examine his character’s rehabilitation.” (An attorney for Devalle said he had made “mistakes” years ago but took his punishment and successfully rebuilt his career.)
Newby’s decision overruled the Court of Appeals, which had ruled in Devalle’s favor. The court’s two Democratic justices dissented, arguing that the Court of Appeals and the trial court judge were correct to conclude that the sheriffs’ commission’s decision to deny Devalle’s certification was “arbitrary and capricious.”
“I agree with the majority that ‘character rehabilitation and forgiveness are principles deeply rooted in the common law and our State’s history,’” Justice Allison Riggs wrote. “The majority’s analysis, however, is hard to accord with those principles and is likely to confuse employees and employers alike [in] an area of employment law that affects countless North Carolinians.”
None of this matters much to Devalle. As we reported in March, he’s now retired.
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Carli Brosseau is a reporter at The Assembly. She joined us from The News & Observer, where she was an investigative reporter. Her work has been honored by the Online News Association and Investigative Reporters and Editors, and published by ProPublica and The New York Times.
