by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press
May 6, 2025

A federal judge ordered the state to certify Democratic Justice Allison Riggs as the winner of a long contested 2024 state Supreme Court race in a ruling late Monday evening. 

The ruling signifies a major victory for Riggs, but it may not be the end of the saga. Her opponent, Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin, may appeal the decision. If he does, the case could be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court in the coming weeks or months.

After Griffin came up 734 votes short in the race between him and Riggs back in November, he filed a series of election protests calling for certain categories of voters to be removed from the vote tally.

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They included those whose voter registrations were allegedly missing a driver’s license or Social Security number; overseas and military absentee voters who did not include a copy of their photo ID with their ballot; and so-called “Never Residents” who voted under inherited North Carolina residency through their parents or legal guardians. 

Together, these protests implicated 62,000 voters. For now, they can breathe easier. 

So can Riggs. At the moment.

“Today, we won,” Riggs said in a statement on Monday night. “I’m proud to continue upholding the Constitution and the rule of law as North Carolina’s Supreme Court Justice.”

Griffin was, as he has been for the past six months, mum on the issue.

The North Carolina Republican Party also stayed quiet. There has been no appeal yet, though Myers gave parties a week to file one before his order goes into effect. 

Griffin faces calls to concede from many,  mostly Democratic groups. 

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a statement that the ruling affirmed that people decide elections, not politicians. “Today, a Trump-appointed judge confirmed what North Carolinians have known since Election Day: Justice Allison Riggs belongs on the state Supreme Court.” 

There’s a chance Griffin might concede the election at this point, said Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper. The messenger may be just as important as the message, he explained. And the messenger wasn’t exactly a liberal judge. 

“You’ve got a Trump-appointed judge who was fairly unequivocal in the order and in the decision,” Cooper said. “This didn’t leave a lot of wiggle room.” 

But nothing has been predictable in this case thus far. 

Whether other losing candidates copy Griffin’s playbook may depend on the final outcome in the case as well as what happens to Griffin himself, Cooper added. “If this is the end of his political career, then I think it’s going to diminish the likelihood that somebody goes forward,” he said. “If, however, he lands on his feet, then I worry that the opposite lesson might be learned, that there was essentially no consequence to pressing this as far as it would go.”

How did we get here? 

Before the case ended up in federal court, North Carolina courts handed Griffin partial wins. 

The N.C. Court of Appeals, where Griffin sits, affirmed each of his protests and established a 15-day process for two of the three categories of voters to fix problems with their voter registration or photo ID. Never Residents, the third category, were declared to be illegal voters because they did not meet the state constitution’s residency requirements. 

Later, the state Supreme Court softened the appellate court’s ruling a bit, by dismissing the largest protest of about 60,000 challenged voters — those with incomplete voter registrations — and doubling the length of the cure process to address problems concerning military and overseas absentee voters. 

The court agreed that Never Residents should be removed from the count, though. 

Both courts hold Republican majorities. Riggs, who keeps her seat on the state Supreme Court until a successor is certified, recused herself from the case. 

After the state Supreme Court’s decision, Riggs appealed to federal court. A federal appeals court eventually paused the cure process — the scope of which was disputed — until the court could fully consider the case. 

Now, that time has arrived. 

Federal court orders Riggs certification

Federal District Judge Richard E. Myers II oversaw the case. Myers, a Donald Trump appointee, has seen Griffin’s arguments before, albeit from a different source. 

Before the election, Myers ruled in a separate case about whether 225,000 North Carolina voters whose registrations allegedly lacked driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers should be considered eligible. 

The state and national Republican Party asked Myers to mandate that the State Board of Elections contact and verify the eligibility of each of the contested voters by September 2024. The state elections board argued that the lawsuit, filed in August, was too close to the 2024 general election for any immediate remedy. 

In late November, Myers agreed. He wrote that the issues of the case would exist after the 2024 election. Additionally, future court decisions in the case could apply to future elections, but would not have any bearing on the most recent one. 

On Monday, Myers affirmed what he said nearly six months prior in a 68-page order. 

The rules were “settled at the time of the 2024 election,” he wrote. 

Overseas and military absentee voters were told they did not need to attach photo IDs, based on the state election board’s interpretation of North Carolina law. Myers noted that there was time to challenge the state election board’s rule before the election, but no challenges came until after the votes were tallied.

The U.S. Constitution does not allow states to change the rules after an election or apply those rule changes “retroactively to only a select group of voters,” he wrote. That would risk putting the integrity of an election in question, he added. 

Furthermore, the 30-day cure process established by the state Supreme Court is unfair, Myers wrote, because only a select subset of overseas and military absentee voters who were identified and challenged by Griffin would have to jump through this extra hoop while similar voters in other counties would not. 

Griffin only challenged absentee voters in six Democratic-leaning counties, and only Guilford County was included in the protests filed before the deadline. 

However, there are overseas and military absentee voters in every North Carolina county who did not submit a photo ID. That unequal treatment is unconstitutional, Myers said. 

Finally, denying Never Residents an opportunity to prove that they actually have state residency and were wrongly challenged before removing them from the count is too heavy a burden on the right to vote, he wrote. 

If challenged votes were removed from the count, it would cause irreparable damage to state residents’ constitutional right to vote, Myers wrote. 

So, the election results must be certified as they stand, Myers ordered. Riggs can keep her seat on the state Supreme Court. And the state elections board may not implement the cure process. 

“You establish the state rules before the game,” Myers concluded. “You don’t change them after the game is done.”

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Riggs wins NC high court race, federal judge says. Appeal likely. appeared first on carolinapublicpress.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

The content demonstrates a center-left bias by highlighting a legal victory for a Democratic justice and framing the Republican challenges as attempts to disenfranchise certain voter groups. While it provides detailed legal context and quotes from both sides, the narrative subtly favors the Democratic perspective by emphasizing voter rights and constitutional protections. It avoids extremist language and presents factual information, positioning itself closer to a center-left viewpoint.