Federal judge orders NC to certify Riggs as winner in Supreme Court election

Yahoo

06-05-2025

In a ruling that could put an end to nearly six months of legal battles over North Carolina's contested Supreme Court election, a federal judge on Monday ruled against the Republican candidate's effort to overturn his narrow loss.
Chief U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled that Jefferson Griffin, a judge on the state Court of Appeals, cannot 'change the rules of the game after it had been played.'
Myers ordered the state not to throw out any votes and to certify the results of the election as they were at the close of the canvass period, with Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs winning by 734 votes.
'Today, we won,' Riggs said in a statement. 'I'm proud to continue upholding the Constitution and the rule of law as North Carolina's Supreme Court Justice.'
However, Myers has put his own order on hold for seven days to give Griffin a chance to appeal.
Griffin and the North Carolina Republican Party, which joined him in litigating the case, did not provide a statement Monday evening, but said they were reviewing the ruling and determining next steps.
In his 68-page ruling, Myers said Griffin and the NC GOP's unprecedented effort to challenge over 65,000 ballots presented an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.
'This case concerns whether the federal Constitution permits a state to alter the rules of an election after the fact and apply those changes retroactively to only a select group of voters, and in so doing treat those voters differently than other similarly situated individuals,' he wrote. 'This case is also about whether a state may redefine its class of eligible voters but offer no process to those who may have been misclassified as ineligible.
'To this court, the answer to each of those questions is 'no.''
Riggs' win has been blocked for months as Griffin's case has wound its way through state and federal courts.
In April, the state Supreme Court threw out Griffin's largest challenge, but ruled that potentially thousands of military and overseas voters would have to prove their eligibility during a 30-day ballot review process, known as a 'cure period.'
Several hundred other voters challenged over their residency status would've had their votes canceled without the chance to cure them.
Myers' decision, if it stands, means that the cure period will not begin and no votes will be discarded.
Griffin and the NC GOP are likely to appeal Myers' ruling to the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, though that court has already ruled against their efforts once. The case could ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a chaotic months-long campaign, Griffin has attempted to discard tens of thousands of votes cast in the race in the hopes that it could flip the result in his favor.
The litigation has ping ponged between state and federal courts and drawn national attention from critics who warn that his effort, if successful, could form the playbook for challenging legitimate election results across the country.
While Griffin initially challenged over 65,000 ballots, the number of votes in contention was significantly reduced by the Republican-dominated North Carolina Supreme Court last month when it rejected his largest challenge, which dealt with voters who didn't have certain identifying numbers in the state's registration database.
The court ruled that this omission, which affected over 60,000 of the challenged voters, was likely not the voters' fault and therefore could not be used to cancel their ballots.
However, in a 4-2 decision, the Supreme Court ordered that potentially thousands of military and overseas voters would have to show their IDs during a 30-day 'cure period' or risk having their votes thrown out.
In his ruling, Myers noted that the state had approved an exemption to the ID requirement for military and overseas voters that was in place for months before the election, but was never challenged until after.
He also noted that Griffin only challenged these votes in six of North Carolina's 100 counties, all of which lean Democratic.
'When the underlying basis for a protest is a rule that applies statewide, a geographically selective protest raises equal protection concerns and the specter of post-election mischief,' Myers wrote.
Under the state Supreme Court's order, a smaller group of voters who were challenged for their residency status would also have had their ballots discarded without a chance to cure them.
Reporting from Anderson Alerts and Popular Information found reason to believe that dozens of these voters, who Griffin argues have never resided in the state, are actually longtime North Carolina residents.
Citing this, Myers said that the court's order to cancel these votes posed a serious risk of disenfranchising eligible voters.
Monday's ruling comes after Myers initially declined to stop the cure period from happening.
When Riggs first appealed the Supreme Court's order to Myers, he said he would review the case before a winner was certified, but would not stop the cure period from beginning. Riggs appealed to the 4th Circuit, which agreed to issue a stay halting the cure period, at least until Myers could rule on the merits of the case.
While briefing commenced in the federal court, Griffin began arguing in state court about the scope of the court-ordered cure period, contending that election officials' plans to implement it were not expansive enough.
The State Board of Elections' plan for carrying out the cure period would have affected 1,675 voters at most. Griffin, however, argued that more ballots — potentially over 5,000 — should be brought into question, and that the challenged voters should have fewer opportunities to cure their ballots.
When Republicans took control of the elections board last week for the first time in nearly a decade, some raised concerns that they could use their newfound majority to tilt the cure process in Griffin's favor.
Myers' order, however, is clear in its instruction to scrap the cure period and certify Riggs' victory.