
Cheri Lynn Beasley (14 February 1966-) was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court from 12 December 2012 to 1 March 2019 (succeeding Patricia Timmons-Goodson and preceding Mark A. Davis) and as Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court from 1 March 2019 to 31 December 2020 (succeeding Mark Martin and preceding Paul Martin Newby).
Biography[]
Cheri Lynn Beasley was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1966, and she worked as an assistant public defender in Cumberland County, North Carolina before becoming a state district court judge in 1999. In 2008, she was elected to the Court of Appeals, becoming the first Black woman elected to statewide office without first being appointed by a Governor. In 2012, Governor Bev Perdue appointed Beasley to the North Carolina Supreme Court, and she served until 2020, when she lost re-election by just 401 votes. She became a partner at a Raleigh law firm before running for the US Senate in 2022, running as a Democrat.