In the one race for a seat on the NC Supreme Court this election, the differences between the candidates are drastic, and the stakes are high.
Pro-Environment Candidate
The Democratic nominee, incumbent Justice Allison Riggs, was appointed by Gov. Roy Cooper in 2023 to fill an unexpired term on the NC Supreme Court, and she is running to retain her seat for a full eight-year term. Prior to her appointments by Governor Cooper (first to the Court of Appeals in and then to the Supreme Court), Riggs worked for 14 years as a civil rights attorney. She focused on voting rights cases, arguing two before the U.S. Supreme Court. The organization for which she worked as Chief Counsel for Voting Rights was the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.
In addition to voting rights, another focus of the coalition is environmental justice, including energy equity, climate justice and resilience, land use and zoning, and community contamination. Justice Riggs has been endorsed by NCLCV’s Conservation PAC and by the NC Chapter of the Sierra Club.
Speaking of her legal career, Justice Riggs says, “As a civil rights attorney, I always understood the importance of having justice-minded people on the bench. For 14 years, I fought to protect our rights–from the right to vote to the right to clean air and water–even arguing twice before the US Supreme Court. I was honored that community leaders across the South placed their trust in me to fight for our democracy alongside them.”
The Alternative
Her Republican opponent, Judge Jefferson Griffin, is a current NC Court of Appeals Judge who is seeking to move up to the higher court. In the area of voting rights, he has praised North Carolina’s strict voter ID law, which is regarded by many civil rights advocates as attempted voter suppression.
Griffin’s record on the bench also indicates that he holds other hard-right positions and applies these to his legal interpretations. For example, he signed on to a court opinion asserting that “life begins at conception”—a stance which is consistent with banning abortion at all stages of pregnancy without exceptions. In the view of many anti-choice advocacy groups, this stance could also bar IVF (in-vitro fertilization) and some widely used forms of contraception.
NC Democracy
No stake in this contest’s outcome is higher than the Court’s interpretation of the state constitution’s protection of “free and fair elections.” Here’s why: North Carolina’s current Congressional and state legislative maps are extreme partisan gerrymanders, in which district maps are drawn to give one party a locked-in electoral advantage. Republican state legislative leaders assert that partisan gerrymandering is not barred by the free and fair elections clause. Democratic legislators assert that the clause should be read to require fair maps.
After the 2022 elections, majority control of the Court flipped from 4-3 in favor of Democrats to 5-2 in favor of Republicans. The current members of the Court align their views on partisan gerrymandering with their party registration. Within months after taking office, the newly pro-gerrymandering Court majority reversed a previous decision by the Court which had barred drawing districts on the basis of favoring a political party. As a result, the NC General Assembly’s Republican majority was allowed to re-draw the election maps with the explicit goal of maximizing the number of Republican-favoring districts. Political observers expect that the partisan lean of the state’s Congressional districts has gone from a 7-7 even split to a lopsided 10-4 or 11-3 margin due to those redrawn maps.
Vote!
Retaining Justice Riggs on the Court is an essential part of the effort to once again enforce the free and fair elections clause by prohibiting extreme partisan gerrymandering. When you vote in this election, don’t forget the judges!
