A selection of passages from the full Turpin v. Charlotte Latin Schools, Inc. decision issued today by the North Carolina Supreme Court, authored by Justice Richard Dietz and joined by Chief Justice Paul Newby along with Justices Philip Berger Jr., Tamara Barringer, and Trey Allen:
According to the complaint in this case, Doug and Nicole Turpin enrolled their children at a private school known as Charlotte Latin School. Beginning in the summer of 2020, the institution began steering its curriculum toward politically charged topics tied to race and gender identity. At a certain point, the Turpins learned that their sixth-grade child was being taught statements such as “Republicans are white supremacists.” The school also required young students to read books dealing with sexuality and gender identity that were not appropriate for their age group.
The Turpins began organizing with other parents to express concerns about the school’s curriculum in 2021. Eventually, they arranged a meeting with school leadership. At that meeting, the school showed little interest in engaging with the Turpins’ concerns. Instead, the school terminated the Turpins’ enrollment contracts and expelled their children without any prior warning.
Among other matters, the Turpins filed a defamation claim, and the court allowed the case to proceed:
The Turpins contend that Charlotte Latin and Baldecchi made false statements to third parties about the contents of the PowerPoint presentation the Turpins delivered at the meeting—specifically, that the PowerPoint asserted a racist notion that minority students and faculty at the school “have not earned their positions and honors” and that those minority students and faculty were “not up to the merit of the school” in comparison to white students and faculty ….
The defamatory statements attributed to Charlotte Latin do not accurately capture the overall message or impact of the PowerPoint discussion. First, the only portion of the presentation addressing how the school’s approach to education could “erode the quality of students” and the “quality of teachers” explicitly referred to everyone, regardless of race. That section of the presentation claimed that an overemphasis on DEI and Critical Theory was diverting the school away from a classical education that emphasizes “objectivity,” “science,” “canonical readings,” and related ideals, toward a political and ideological agenda.
When a school that had historically prioritized a classical education shifts toward a partisan, politicized curriculum, as the PowerPoint suggested, that transformation affects every student and every teacher equally. None of these statements indicate that the shift in curriculum or ideological direction harmed minority students and faculty but spared white students and staff.
The other portions of the PowerPoint examined by the Court of Appeals critiqued non-merit-based hiring or admissions practices and advocated a return to a “meritocracy.” Importantly, none of these statements comment on the quality or merit of specific students or groups of students. The statements simply propose that the school recommit to a merit-based standard aimed at achieving “academic excellence.”
If we were to adopt the Court of Appeals’ reasoning regarding these points, it would imply that any statement criticizing non-merit-based hiring or admissions practices amounts to a claim that people who benefited from those practices would not otherwise qualify on merit. This is a fallacy. A person who benefits from a factor outside merit can still be qualified on merit alone, and the mere presence of that extra factor does not speak to the merit of the candidate.
In plain terms, criticizing所谓 “DEI goals” or other race-conscious criteria in hiring and admissions, and urging a return to a “meritocracy,” does not equal alleging that minority students and faculty have not earned their positions or are not as meritorious as others. We disagree that the gist or sting of these two categories of remarks are legally identical. The latter—statements that imply the purported inferiority of minority students or faculty—are harmful and racist. They are the kind of statements that, if repeated to others, can injure a person’s reputation and name. Accordingly, in appropriate contexts, alleging that someone made this kind of harmful statement when they did not can be defamatory. Even accepting all allegations in the complaint as true, this remains one of those cases….
The school did not issue a subjective opinion like “the Turpins are racists.” Rather, the school told its entire community—students, parents, and staff—that the Turpins had “said” a specific racist remark. That assertion has an objective answer: either the Turpins said it or they did not. The proper comparison is not to say someone is a racist, as cited by the dissent, but to say someone used a racial epithet. If that claim is false, it is defamatory.
As with other factual assertions in this contentious case, we acknowledge that more factual nuance may exist beyond what is alleged in the complaint. For instance, we have not yet seen exactly what the presenters stated as they displayed the PowerPoint. At this stage, our review is limited to the document itself. The school’s email and Baldecchi’s statements, in full context, may have addressed issues beyond the PowerPoint file.
Courts cannot uncover this full context at the pleading stage. That task is reserved for discovery of facts. At this early juncture, we treat the complaint’s allegations as true and draw all reasonable inferences in the Turpins’ favor. On that basis, the Turpins have plausibly alleged materially false statements by the defendants. We therefore reject the Court of Appeals’ reasoning on falsity….
Justice Allison Riggs, joined by Justice Anita Earls, dissented on this point; an excerpt follows:
[A]llegations of racism, like many subjective viewpoints, lie in the eye of the beholder and do not neatly fit into a falsity framework. How could a plaintiff prove that a statement expressing a particular viewpoint is false? How could a defendant prove it is true? … “… [M]any courts in other jurisdictions that have confronted defamation claims based on accusations of bigotry or racism have treated such statements as nonactionable opinions.” …
The majority neglects to assess whether the alleged defamatory statement is a factual claim that can be false, or an opinion that cannot be. Charlotte Latin’s email, which the Turpins say references them, states that parents complained “that diverse students and faculty have not earned their positions and honors at Latin and that diversity comes at the expense of excellence.”
Equating this actual statement, a reflection of values and opinion the school rejected, with “claiming someone used a racial epithet” is a false equivalence. The heart of the Turpins’ defamation claim is that Charlotte Latin, in describing the Refocus Latin presentation, portrayed them negatively. That conclusion is a subjective inference that does not lend itself to a falsity standard. Even under a liberal notice pleading regime, they must plead a legally viable claim—which they cannot do if the alleged defamatory statement is an opinion incapable of falsity.
As a matter of law, allegations of racism should be treated as unprovable opinion, not fact, as recognized by other jurisdictions. See, e.g., Stevens v. Tilman (7th Cir. 1988) (holding that an accusation of racism “is not actionable unless it implies the existence of undisclosed, defamatory facts”); Murphy v. Rosen (Conn. 2025) (joining “numerous other jurisdictions” to hold that alleging someone is a “white supremacist” is “not objectively verifiable” and thus non-actionable); Cousins v. Goodier (Del. 2022) (holding that an allegation of racism was not “provably false” and that “the First Amendment makes clear that [defining what it means to be racist] would be beyond the court’s role”).… The worry is that this superficial treatment of the limits of state defamation law to regulate public discourse will chill important conversations and will open courts to disputes that should be resolved in open, public dialogue, not by judges….
The court likewise allowed the plaintiffs’ separate breach-of-contract and fraud claims to proceed.
