North Carolina Republicans this year are hoping to again win every statewide judicial race on the ballot — repeating the party’s domination of those races in 2020 and 2022, when it flipped control of the state Supreme Court and solidified its hold on the Court of Appeals.
One of the state’s seven Supreme Court seats is up for grabs in November. So are three of the 15 Court of Appeals seats. Democratic victories wouldn’t immediately change the balance of power on either court, but they would put the party back on track toward retaking judicial power in the state.
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A lot is at stake: In recent years, state courts have deliberated important cases affecting election laws, redistricting, education funding, Confederate monuments, racial bias in criminal cases, and the balance of power in state government. Some of those issues have yet to make it to the Supreme Court; others have but could return. Abortion cases could also find their way to the state court system as North Carolina, like other states, refines its laws in the post-Roe v. Wade era.
The marquee state judicial contest at the ballot box is the Supreme Court race between Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs and her Republican challenger, Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin. The high court currently has a 5-2 Republican majority, so a Griffin win would shift that to 6-1 in favor of the GOP.
Riggs and Griffin briefly served together on the Court of Appeals; Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper appointed Riggs to a vacancy on the appeals court in early 2023. Later that year he elevated her to the Supreme Court, to fill the vacancy created when Michael Morgan resigned from the bench to run for governor.
Other than both being 43 years old — two of the youngest judges in North Carolina — the similarities between Riggs and Griffin are few, offering voters clear choices.
That’s one point on which the candidates do agree. In interviews, they each sought to cast the other as being too extreme for a seat on the state’s highest court.
“My whole life has been about public service,” Griffin said. “My opponent worked at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice for practically her whole legal career, and filed some of the most partisan and divisive lawsuits in our state. And so I think North Carolinians have a clear choice.”
Riggs said she can’t see a 6-1 GOP majority on the Supreme Court truly representing the state: “I understand North Carolina to be a state that wants critical thinkers, doesn't want group think, wants balance,” she said. “And I think folks running under rigid approaches that would undermine not only reproductive freedom but the right to contraception, the right to marriage equality — North Carolinians are going to reject extremism like that. Extremism has no place on the bench.”
The candidates
Riggs worked her way through college and graduate school at the University of Florida, then graduated from law school at UF, too. The West Virginia native became involved in civil rights advocacy and moved to Durham for a job at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which frequently files lawsuits in North Carolina and other states against gerrymandering, voter ID and other causes. She argued two cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court while still in her 30s and rose through the organization, ultimately taking over leadership of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice until Cooper made her a judge. She has a bachelor’s degree in microbiology and a master’s degree in history.
Griffin, a Nash County native, was the captain of his high school football team and worked as a charter boat fisherman between college at UNC-Chapel Hill and law school at North Carolina Central University. As a Judge Advocate General's Corps lawyer for the North Carolina Army National Guard, he serves as the guard’s senior defense counsel. Before being elected to the state Court of Appeals in 2020, Griffin did private civil and criminal defense work in Kinston before moving to Wake County and becoming a prosecutor, then a district court judge. His bachelor’s degree is in American history and political science.
Key comparisons
Judicial experience: Griffin has been a judge, at the trial court and appellate level, since 2015. Riggs has been a judge since 2023.
Abortion: Riggs is campaigning heavily on her support for women’s reproductive rights, noting other Southern states where the courts have had the final say on abortion bans, in-vitro fertilization and related issues. Griffin recently signed onto a ruling, written by a fellow Republican judge, that declared life begins at conception. That opinion was formally withdrawn after receiving public attention, in a rare move by the court system.
Griffin said he approved of withdrawing the original decision about life beginning at conception but couldn’t say more because of rules against discussing the private deliberations of judges. Riggs countered, saying: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Civil rights and criminal justice: Riggs’ career before becoming a judge was in civil rights work, mostly focused on issues such as voting rights and gerrymandering. She has limited history as a judge ruling on issues related to civil rights in the criminal justice system. Griffin has more of a history. After then-Chief Justice Cheri Beasley gave a speech acknowledging systemic racism in the court system in 2020 and calling for change, Griffin wrote an opinion that slammed Beasley’s speech as the real “problem in our court system,” saying it led to Black defendants making “inflammatory and unnecessary” claims about racism in the justice system. Griffin concluded: “I reject this argument. The law is color blind and applies equally to every citizen in the United States of America.”
Riggs is endorsed by multiple groups focused on racial equity or progressive causes, as well as by the mayors of Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro and other cities. Griffin is endorsed by multiple county sheriffs and police union groups.
Politics: For years, the court’s rulings have split purely along party lines in key political cases about election laws, voting rights and similar issues. That trend has persisted under Democratic and Republican majorities alike. A Riggs victory would position Democrats to potentially to take back control of the Supreme Court in 2028, when three more seats will be up for grabs. A Griffin victory would make it easier for Republicans to hold onto the court for longer.
The 2028 and 2030 judicial elections will be highly important to both political parties because the 2030 Census will be followed by a new round of political redistricting — which state lawmakers could use to sway the balance of power in Congress and the N.C. General Assembly until 2040.
But political cases are only a small, albeit important, part of what the high court does.
Most of its work is on more mundane issues related to criminal appeals, contract and business disputes, questions surrounding child custody and parental rights, and more.
Judicial philosophies
North Carolina voters tend to be more pro-Republican when voting for judges than when voting for other prominent state offices. In 2020, voters backed Cooper for governor by 4.5 percentage points and gave Republicans only a narrow 6-4 advantage in the Council of State offices that run state government agencies. That same year, they also elected Republicans in all eight of the judicial elections on that year’s ballot.
Both Supreme Court candidates appeared to recognize that reality in interviews. Griffin criticized Riggs as insufficiently conservative. Riggs touted her ability to work with, and occasionally win over, her Republican colleagues on the court. Riggs also explicitly mentioned protecting gun rights in an interview, just as Griffin’s campaign touts his love of hunting.
Riggs said she’s particularly proud of one opinion she wrote earlier this year, North Carolina v. Jonas. It dealt with the process surrounding someone who pleads guilty to a crime, without taking a plea deal, but later appeals their conviction. The key questions in the case were ones the Supreme Court hadn’t ruled on before, meaning that whichever justice won the court’s internal deliberations on the case would set new precedent for the state. Three of the five Republican justices joined the court’s two Democrats, giving Riggs the votes for a 5-2 ruling that, in broad terms, solidified constitutional rights of defendants in criminal cases.
Riggs said examples like that show how the justices’ political parties don’t predetermine every ruling — and how she can author opinions capable of winning over her colleagues on complex issues, despite her junior status on the court.
“My record isn't hypothetical anymore,” she said. “I've shown that I have a strong bipartisan record. I write clear, well researched opinions. And I work to build bridges with my colleagues.”
Griffin, however, said he’s concerned that Riggs won’t ascribe to herself a specific judicial philosophy. He considers himself an originalist, saying “if I try to change the meaning of a word in a statute or constitutional provision, and put my spin on it, that’s judicial activism.”
Courts should broadly defer to the state legislature, Griffin said, and refrain from making sweeping changes to how the state’s rules and laws operate: “We send people to the General Assembly as their elected representatives make the law,” Griffin said. “Our job, as judges, is to interpret the law — and with a more originalist or conservative approach.”
Based on their time serving together at the Court of Appeals, Griffin said, plus Riggs’ work on the Supreme Court since then and the candidate forums they’ve done during the election, he’s not impressed with RIggs’ explanations of how she decides cases.
“I've never gotten a clear answer on how she interprets the law,” Griffin said. “I call it ‘coach speak.’ I mean, it kind of sounds like a coach at halftime trying to explain what their team's doing. ‘We're going to hustle harder. We're going to jump higher, hit harder, take care of the ball,’ that kind of stuff. But I've never heard her articulate a solid judicial philosophy.”
Riggs has a similarly dismissive take on Griffin’s more rigid approach, saying there’s a good reason she doesn’t ascribe to a specific judicial philosophy — since oftentimes those philosophies are little more than dressed-up ways of excusing political favoritism from the bench for one political party’s views.
“I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all judicial philosophy,” she said. “I think that's become a code word for how you're going to vote. I'm going to apply the law and defend the constitution. I am not going to put party or ideology over state and country.”
Other judicial races
Three seats on the state Court of Appeals are also on the ballot this year.
One is to fill the seat Riggs vacated when she joined the Supreme Court. Republican Tom Murry, a former prosecutor and state senator from Morrisville who is also an Army National Guard JAG lawyer, is running against Democratic incumbent Carolyn Thompson. Thompson is a former trial court judge in the circuit covering Franklin, Granville, Vance and Warren counties. Thompson also ran for the court in 2022, losing that race, but Cooper appointed her to the bench in 2023 to temporarily fill Riggs' former seat until this year’s election.
Another Court of Appeals race pits Democrat Ed Eldred against Republican incumbent Valerie Zachary. Eldred is an appellate attorney from Orange County with lengthy experience arguing cases on appeal. Zachary worked in private practice in Yadkin County for nearly three decades with her husband Lee Zachary, a former state representative, before being appointed to a vacancy on the court in 2015 by then-Gov. Pat McCrory. She then won the seat in the 2016 election.
The third Court of Appeals race is between two newcomers, Republican Chris Freeman and Democrat Martin Moore. Freeman, a former prosecutor and current judge in Rockingham County, is also a JAG lawyer in the Air Force reserves. Moore, a former public defender who now works as an appellate lawyer in Asheville, also serves on the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners. Freeman unseated incumbent Judge Hunter Murphy in the GOP primary. Incumbent judges almost never lose primary elections, but Murphy had been publicly censured in 2020 by the state Supreme Court over allegations that he allowed a toxic work environment rife with sexual comments directed against his female law clerks, mostly carried out by a childhood friend he had hired as a top staffer.
There are also dozens of local judicial elections on the ballot this year for county-level trial court judges. To find a fill list of all the races on your ballot, enter your name at the State Board of Elections’ sample ballot webpage.