On May 23, Administrative Law Judge Karlene Turrentine of the NC Office of Administrative Hearings issued an order that didn’t just deny my contested case—it weaponized my other case in an attempt to discredit me entirely. The ruling wasn’t grounded in facts, legal precedent, or the specific procedural violations I raised. It read more like a smear campaign than a judicial decision. Despite the fact that my federal TRO was filed ex parte and never served in the Eastern Distrct, Judge Turrentine cited it—complete with docket number and internal details—as part of her justification for dismissing my case. So that means she either conducted a improper investigation then distorted facts in violation of my 4th Amendment or she was informed about it by one of the named parties showcasing collusion between the courts.
What makes this even more outrageous is that she didn’t just dismiss my claims on sovereign immunity grounds—she used the bulk of her ruling to attack my character. The NCHRC is not protected by sovereign immunity when they violate civil rights. In addition, sovereign immunity only applies when they are being sued, which is not what I was doing. She implied that I was forum shopping and manipulating the system, even though I followed every rule, met every deadline, and sought relief through the only channels available to me after the North Carolina Human Relations Commission completely botched my housing discrimination investigation. Instead of examining the procedural violations I raised—like the HRC accepting late evidence from my landlord without giving me a chance to respond, ignoring retaliation claims, and failing to apply the correct legal standard—she deflected. She deliberately twisted my complaint to frame me as someone abusing the system, even as I cited federal law and due process violations backed by evidence.
Worse, the judge concluded that because I didn’t appeal the HRC’s findings directly, my due process claims somehow didn’t count. But that was never the issue—I didn’t file to re-argue the merits. This is also contradicting because if I was trying to appeal, then it would have been dismissed for that reason. I filed because the process itself was rigged. The order ignored the fact that I had received a Right to Sue letter that explicitly preserved my right to file a civil case, which I had every intention of doing. Instead of acknowledging that, the judge wrote as if my only motivation was to retaliate against officials who didn’t rule in my favor.
By dredging up nearly every filing I’ve made over the past year—including in completely unrelated courts—and stitching them together into a narrative of “litigiousness,” the judge tried to make my effort to seek justice look like a campaign of harassment. It wasn’t. It was my only recourse because each system was refusing to uphold its oath to help the public. When you’re locked out of the process by broken institutions, you either give up—or you fight. I chose to fight.