4th Circuit Allows GOP North Carolina Supreme Court Candidate’s Challenge To Proceed in State Court for Now

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that a district court correctly sent back to state court a lawsuit from GOP North Carolina Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin contesting his 2024 election loss to incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs.
However, the 4th Circuit added that if the federal legal issues raised in the case are still outstanding after litigation plays out in North Carolina state courts, then the lawsuit may return to federal court for further proceedings.
Tuesday’s ruling — which is sure to delay a final resolution of the matter — comes as the procedural posture of Griffin’s legal disputes seeking to throw out over 60,000 ballots has become increasingly more complex. In effect, the decision means that the GOP candidate’s challenges will proceed in Wake County Superior Court and then likely work their way back up to the North Carolina Supreme Court on appeal.
For his part, Griffin had hoped to keep the case in state court, where the Republican-majority North Carolina Supreme Court would have the final say. Riggs and the state board of elections, on the other hand, argued that Griffin’s post hoc challenges to tens of thousands of ballots would implicate North Carolinians’ rights under federal law and the U.S. Constitution — meaning a federal court must retain jurisdiction over the case.
All the while, certification of Riggs’ electoral victory over Griffin — which was confirmed by two separate recounts — remains on hold due to a Jan. 7 order from the North Carolina Supreme Court’s Republican majority. Griffin himself has previously admitted that once the race is certified, all of his outstanding election challenges will become moot.
Griffin’s legal efforts to overturn Riggs’ win began last December when he filed two separate buckets of cases — one in the form of a petition initiated directly in the state Supreme Court, the other as a trio of legal actions brought in Wake County Superior Court.
The nearly identical legal challenges both raised claims against three distinct categories of ballots to which Griffin had unsuccessfully mounted protests before the state board of elections.
The three buckets of challenged ballots include those cast by overseas voters who did not submit a copy of their photo IDs, voters who never previously resided in North Carolina and individuals whose voter registrations were allegedly incomplete.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections and Riggs requested to remove both sets of cases to federal court, but Trump-appointed Judge Richard E. Myers remanded the suits back to North Carolina state courts. In response, Riggs and the board appealed the cases to the 4th Circuit.
On Jan. 27, the 4th Circuit heard oral argument specifically concerning Griffin’s case filed directly in the North Carolina Supreme Court. But just four days prior to the arguments, the North Carolina Supreme Court dismissed Griffin’s petition seeking review of his case and concluded that his challenges should first proceed in Wake County Superior Court — a move that further complicated the matter.
Much of the very technical oral argument turned on the question of whether the 4th Circuit could bring the case back to federal court, given that the state Supreme Court dismissed Griffin’s petition from which the appeal originally arose. In today’s ruling, the 4th Circuit ultimately determined that the state Supreme Court’s dismissal of the underlying petition “renders moot the appeals of the district court’s order.”
As for the appeal arising from the district court’s remand order in Griffin’s separate set of three Wake County Superior Court actions, the 4th Circuit concluded that Myers was correct in abstaining from exercising federal jurisdiction over the cases and sending the actions back to state court.
Tuesday’s unanimous decision further directed the district court to “modify its order to expressly retain jurisdiction of the federal issues identified in the Board’s notice of removal should those issues remain after the resolution of the state court proceedings.”
“The resolution of…issues of North Carolina law could avoid the need to address the federal constitutional and other federal issues the Board raised in removing the case. For example, if the Board prevails in Wake County on the state law issues, the resolution of the federal claims may not be necessary,” the three-judge panel noted.
Ultimately, the 4th Circuit’s ruling does not resolve the merits of Griffin’s challenges, and it is yet to be seen whether Wake County Superior Court will grant his requests to discard scores of ballots.
A hearing on Griffin’s challenges to three categories of ballots is scheduled for Feb. 7 in Wake County Superior Court. Regardless of how the court rules, his cases could nevertheless end up back in the North Carolina Supreme Court and/or federal court, rendering the timeline for an ultimate resolution uncertain.
Riggs — along with North Carolina Democrats and voting rights advocates — has repeatedly condemned Griffin’s legal maneuvers seeking to gain a seat on the state Supreme Court bench by disenfranchising North Carolinians en masse. The North Carolina Supreme Court election at issue is the last uncertified 2024 statewide race in the country.