RNC Asks North Carolina Supreme Court to Resume Proceedings In Election Challenge
The Republican National Committee (RNC) and North Carolina GOP asked the state Supreme Court to resume proceedings in an election challenge regarding a seat on its own bench.
Republicans are attempting to overturn North Carolina Supreme Court GOP candidate Jefferson Griffin’s loss to Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs in November. They filed a lawsuit Dec. 31 seeking to toss 60,000 ballots in the 2024 election from voters with allegedly “incomplete” registration information.
Griffin filed a similar election challenge of his own, and it has bounced back and forth between state and federal court.
Currently, certification of the race is halted, and Riggs is serving on the bench because, under state law, the incumbent holds over until a race is certified.
Since Griffin’s election challenge had been considered and heard in multiple courts and the RNC’s case — which is very similar — had remained stagnant, the North Carolina State Board of Elections and Democratic National Committee (DNC) asked the state appeals court to pause proceedings in the RNC case.
In their Jan. 15 request, they argued the Republican plaintiffs’ claims are “entirely duplicative of claims already proceeding on an expedited basis in other cases, including before our state Supreme Court.” They added that allowing both election challenges to proceed “presents a serious risk of inconsistent results” and would waste judicial and legal resources.
They also argued the candidates in the race, Griffin and Riggs, have a much larger interest in this legal issue than the RNC and North Carolina GOP, so Griffin’s election challenge should be prioritized.
The appeals court granted their request a couple of days later, pausing proceedings in the RNC case while Griffin’s legal challenges were being litigated.
Now, the RNC has asked the state Supreme Court to either reverse the trial court’s decision rejecting its motion to immediately segregate the 60,000 ballots or to allow proceedings to resume in the appeals court.
They argued the state Supreme Court’s Jan. 22 decision and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal’s Feb. 4 ruling in Griffin’s election challenge didn’t address the actual merits of the case, instead focusing on issues of jurisdiction, so they should be allowed to hear the RNC’s case.
However, the question of whether Griffin’s challenge should be heard in state or federal court was resolved. The case is currently going through the state court process but can return to a federal court afterward if there are outstanding claims that remain unresolved.
Since the courts resolved where Griffin’s case can be heard, they are now considering the underlying issues on the merits.
In fact, the Wake County Superior Court rejected Griffin’s request to toss 60,000 ballots in a Feb. 7 ruling. Griffin appealed the decision, and the state Supreme Court is likely to weigh in on the appeal in the near future.
On Tuesday, the state election board and DNC submitted a filing to express their opposition to the RNC’s request to resume proceedings in its parallel case.
In the filing, they reiterated their earlier arguments that the appeals court pausing the GOP case “appropriately conserves judicial resources and avoids potentially conflicting analysis in multiple cases of the identical legal issue.”
There’s no set timeline for when the state Supreme Court has to rule on the RNC’s request.