NC SUPREME COURT ASSOCIATE JUSTICE, Seat 6
NOTE: You may vote for one. Candidates are presented below in the order they appear on your ballot.
Reason for my Endorsement: Full disclosure: I have known Riggs for many years and consider her a statewide heroine for voter rights and justice. She is smart, creative, dogged, and has been one of, if not the, best and most effective civil rights litigators anywhere. She gets my wholehearted endorsement for this seat.
Jefferson G. Griffin (Republican)
https://www.jeffersongriffin.com/
https://www.facebook.com/jefferson.glenn.griffin
Griffin is from Nash County, graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill, and then from NC Central School of Law. In 2010, he joined the Wake County District Attorney’s Office where he prosecuted cases from infractions to first degree murder. In 2015, Jefferson was appointed by Governor McCrory to be a District Court Judge in Wake County. Griffin was elected to a four-year term in the 2016 general election in Wake County where he served through 2020. He was then elected in November 2020 to the North Carolina Court of Appeals in a statewide election.
Griffin serves as a Captain and JAG Officer in the North Carolina Army National Guard. He deployed to the Middle East from 2019 – 2020 with the 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team.
In October 2023, Griffin joined another conservative Court of Appeals judge in ruling that a mother could lose her parental rights to her infant if she committed a crime while pregnant. In their reasoning, they argued that “life begins at conception.” Griffin pulled his decision from a NC Supreme Court ruling from back in 1949 that was about property rights and inheritance, of all things. But using Griffin’s logic, it’s pretty easy to see how he’d rule in an abortion case or in an IVF case as a Supreme Court justice.
About a month ago, critics warned NC citizens that Griffin is too extreme for the job. They noted his judicial policies in favor of gerrymandering, against the LGBTQ community, against public education, and against abortion rights.
Allison Riggs (Democrat)
https://www.riggsforourcourts.com/
https://www.facebook.com/riggsforourcourts
Riggs grew up in Morgantown, WV. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Microbiology in 2003, Master’s degree in History in 2006 and her Juris Doctor in 2009 — all at the University of Florida. In 2009, Riggs joined the Southern Coalition for Social Justice to eventually lead the Voting Rights Program there, spending 14 years as a civil rights and voting rights attorney.
Over the years, Riggs has demonstrated proven success as a civil rights litigator who has served as lead counsel in numerous voting rights cases. She offers strong credentials in work that has focused on fighting for fair redistricting plans, against voter suppression, and advocating for electoral reforms to expand access to voting for all people.
Bob Phillips, the former Executive Director of Common Cause North Carolina, says “There may not be a finer litigator on gerrymandering and redistricting in the country than Allison Riggs…. She has been a tireless advocate for protecting the rights of all North Carolinians, standing up for marginalized communities and holding those in power accountable to the people.”
Riggs has made two appearances at the U.S. Supreme Court arguing against gerrymandering and has litigated redistricting cases in Texas, Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina. She served as lead counsel for Rucho v. League of Women Voters of North Carolina, making the case that partisan gerrymandering claims should be allowed to be heard in federal court and as a lead litigator in Moore v. Harper, a U.S. Supreme Court case involving partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina.
After Michael Morgan stepped down from the Supreme in 2023, NC Gov. Roy Cooper appointed Riggs to serve out his unexpired term. She serves that Court now as one of only two progressives of the seven justices. Progressive justices Riggs and Earls must survive the next two election cycles to have any chance of taking back the majority when Republican Justices Phil Berger Jr. and Tamara Barringer are up for re-election in 2028.
“The state’s Supreme Court has become yet another political battleground ever since Republican legislative leaders eliminated public financing in 2013 and then made judicial races partisan… Rulings have become more politicized, too. Last year, the court’s majority decided a trio of voting rights cases—on gerrymandering, voter ID, and felon disenfranchisement—two of which had been previously decided by the old Democratic-majority court. It reversed the rulings on both. Now the court is reconsidering its ruling in the 30-year-old Leandro school-funding case, after (Justice) Berger Jr.’s father–the Senate Republican leader–and other GOP leaders asked for a do-over of the previous court’s order to fund two years of a $1.7 billion comprehensive K-12 spending plan.”
The Republicans are putting a lot of power and money behind getting rid of Riggs. In past years, and in deference to associate justices running for reelection, the NC Supreme Court Chief Justice usually scheduled no more than 2 or 3 oral arguments in September and October before the election. But this year, and allegedly because the only assoc. justice running is Democrat Riggs, Republican Chief Justice Paul Newby has scheduled a whopping dozen oral arguments in September and October, which commentator Billy Corriher says is a ratty way to keep Riggs off the campaign trail.