Quick Hit: Judge rules for Democrat in NC Supreme Court race
Order has a 7 day stay to allow for appeals
Last night, Eastern District of North Carolina Chief Judge Myers issued a ruling favoring of Democrat Associate Justice Allison Riggs, along with the cases brought by the NC Democratic party and other intervenors.
Myers’ order directs the election to be certified with Riggs as winner.
The judge essentially ruled that retroactively invalidating ballots from overseas military and civilian voters violates their substantive due process and equal protection rights.
“You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done,” Myers wrote.
Additionally, Myers said the lack of a cure process for voters misclassified as “Never Residents” violates their procedural due process and constitutes an unconstitutional burden on their voting rights.
To explain a bit more, Myers said the cure process ordered by the state courts, which applied only to select counties and not uniformly across all 100 counties, violated the equal protection rights of overseas military and civilian voters by treating similarly situated voters differently. This is actually a ding on the NC State Board of Elections (NCSBE) too. If this case has shown anything, it is that voter registrations in NC need auditing for uniformity, validity, and eligibility.
Myers issued a permanent injunction preventing the NCSBE from implementing the state courts' orders (proceed with dropping somewhere around 5,500 ballots that included “Never Residents”) and ordered certification of the election results based on the canvassing period tally, effectively validating Justice Riggs' 734 vote victory.
The order includes a stay on enforcement of 7 days for her opponent, Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, to decide whether to appeal.
Read the order here.
Griffin’s camp has only said they are reviewing the order and their options.
Riggs issued a statement on X that read, “Today, we won. I‘m proud to continue upholding the Constitution and the rule of law as North Carolina’s Supreme Court Justice.”