Judge takes Miss North Carolina title from both women
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – North Carolina, which has had two reigning beauty queens for a month, now has none. A judge on Tuesday ordered the Miss North Carolina pageant to not recognize anyone as the state titleholder until Rebekah Revels, who won the pageant but was forced to resign over topless snapshots, resolves her legal dispute with the organization.
A month ago, state judge Narley L. Cashwell ruled that Revels, who was crowned in June and stepped down in July, had a valid contract with the Miss North Carolina Pageant Organization.
Revels has sued the state pageant for breach of contract. But the judge said Tuesday that contracts between the pageant and its contestants say disputes should be settled by arbitration.
Until that is done in Revels’ case, he ruled that no one should serve as Miss North Carolina.
Based on Cashwell’s original order, Revels went to Atlantic City, N.J., for the Miss America pageant along with Misty Clymer, the original runner-up who was elevated to the title when Revels resigned.
Within a week, a federal judge refused to force the Miss America pageant to include Revels, leaving Clymer as the state’s sole representative at the Sept. 21 competition.
Cashwell’s decision Tuesday was “quite bizarre, I think,” said Revels’ lawyer, Barry Nakell. He said he will ask Cashwell to reconsider.
Clymer’s lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.
Revels, 24, claims she was unfairly forced to resign in July when former boyfriend Tosh Welch told pageant officials he had two nude photographs of her. She has also sued the Miss America Organization and Welch. Both Clymer and Revels were on the job Tuesday as Miss North Carolina, apparently unaware of the ruling.
Clymer was in Randleman to mark the start of construction on a children’s camp being built in honor of the late NASCAR driver Adam Petty.
Revels was in Concord, where she is slated to serve as honorary race director of Sunday’s Winston Cup race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
“We’re both serving right now,” she said earlier Tuesday. “I wish her the best. … We’re kind of both covering the state.”