The Griffin & Riggs NC Supreme Court Race: Protecting 60,000 voters from erasure

The North Carolina Supreme court race was one of the most watched elections in the country, and one of the last in the country to be certified. Justice Allison Riggs, the Democrat candidate and incumbent, had her 734-vote lead in the November election confirmed in two recounts- but Judge Jefferson Griffin, the Republican candidate, brought both state and federal court challenges to the outcome of the race. In an attempt to win his election, he challenged the validity of more than 60,000 votes cast by North Carolinians.

In February, we filed an amicus brief on behalf of organizational and individual clients impacted by this attempt to throw out thousands of legally cast votes. The organizations we represented were NC NAACP, NC Black Alliance, Common Cause Education Fund, Democracy North Carolina, El Pueblo, N.C. Asian Americans Together, and the NC Poor People’s Campaign. Through the brief as well as our organizing and communications work, we told the story of how this attempt to change the rules of an election after it had concluded was not only unconstitutional but also something that would undermine voters’ confidence in the North Carolina electoral system for decades to come.

In close collaboration with partners across the state, our legal, organizing, and communications efforts helped catalyze statewide protests, drawing thousands of North Carolinians into the streets to reject an attempt to overturn a legitimate election outcome. What we saw was rare and powerful, and a broad multiracial coalition of voters, advocates, and community organizations unified around a clear demand: uphold the principle that voters choose their representatives, not that representatives choose their voters. Ultimately, in May 2025, after our intervention in state-court proceedings, a federal judge in a related proceeding ordered the election be certified, and Judge Griffin conceded the election to Justice Riggs.

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