Four newspaper companies publishing in Guilford County filed suit this afternoon alleging that a law passed last year by the General Assembly allowing the county to publish and sell public notices on its own website violates the North Carolina Constitution. The companies are asking the Superior Court of Wake County Superior Court to award money damages and issue a permanent injunction preventing the law from being enforced.

Senate Bill 181 passed last year after an almost-identical, statewide public notice measure approved by the legislature was vetoed by Governor Roy Cooper (D). Republican leadership in the General Assembly didn’t have the votes to override the veto, so they hijacked another piece of legislation during a special session and replaced it with a portion of the vetoed bill relating solely to Guilford County. In one of its counts, the lawsuit alleges that those actions violated procedural standards for legislative process established in a 1995 amendment to the North Carolina Constitution.

[Read or download the complaint.]

A separate count claims SB 181 violates the constitution’s guarantee of freedom of the press. Supporting that claim, plaintiffs allege the law was intended to “restrain” them from covering the General Assembly by demonstrating the “enormous financial consequences” the legislature can inflict on “offending” newspapers.

The papers also claim the law violates a section of the state constitution forbidding the General Assembly from enacting “special or local act(s)”; that it denies them and their readers equal protection under the law by targeting them for disparate treatment; and that it is an unconstitutional taking of private property that usurps their public notice business and deprives them of “the fruits of their own labor.”

The papers participating in the suit are the News & Record of Greensboro, Carolina Peacemaker, the High Point Enterprise and the Jamestown News.

Early in the complaint, the plaintiffs explained why they couldn’t provide a website address for the ordinance Guilford County adopted pursuant to the authority granted to it by the General Assembly. “The link to the Guilford County Code accessible through the (county website) has not been updated since August 22, 2014, and therefore the ratified version of the Ordinance is not online,” noted the plaintiffs.