In 2023, NC Gov. Roy Cooper appointed State Court of Appeals Judge Allison Riggs, left, to the North Carolina Supreme Court to fill a vacancy. Riggs was one of several judges who dissented to an order Monday ordering RFK Jr.'s name be stripped from the state's absentee ballots. (AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum)
Allison Riggs is the Democrat who’s running for North Carolina’s Supreme Court this November. She’ll be on everyone’s ballot in this state. So let’s get to know her.
We’ve talked about Allison Riggs a few times at Cardinal & Pine. She’s a longtime North Carolina attorney who, with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, has argued twice before the US Supreme Court in major voting rights cases.
Riggs, as much as anyone in the state, has been on the front lines of voting rights litigation in North Carolina. I would go into how many times our government has been sued for gerrymandering and alleged voter suppression, but that would be a feature-length film.
RELATED: What is the NC Supreme Court and how does it work?
Gov. Roy Cooper appointed Riggs in 2023 to fill a vacant seat on the NC Supreme Court, and she’s running now to keep that seat.
Riggs is expected to offer a progressive counter on the state Supreme Court, which right now leans heavily to the right, so right they all but gave the conservative legislature a pass to gerrymander in 2023. Five out of seven members are Republicans. Riggs is also a woman on a court that could play a pivotal role in deciding the future of abortion rights here in NC.
Republicans in this state have a recurring argument against her candidacy. So let’s hear them out.
Since Riggs was appointed, Republicans have talked about her like she’s a party stooge—just an unaccomplished do-nothing, not a credible justice.
Oh, and would you look at that: Listed with Earls there is her former colleague at the radical Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Activist Allison Riggs, who, as luck would have it, appeared before Earls today, too.
Impartial? Who are they kidding?https://t.co/1vZm3UDvkA
— NCGOP (@NCGOP) February 2, 2022
Why is that? Like Justice Anita Earls, Riggs’ colleague on the NC Supreme Court, it was literally Riggs’ job to argue against gerrymandering and voter suppression when she led the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.
So here’s why, here in the South, and specifically in North Carolina, those Republican arguments against her shouldn’t hold water.
Republicans have been in charge of the North Carolina legislature since 2010, and since then, they’ve spent more time in a courtroom than Donald Trump, defending their gerrymandered legislative districts and voter suppression bills.
Remember how in 2016 a federal court found that North Carolina’s Republicans targeted Black voters to suppress their votes “with surgical precision?”
It’s lawyers like Riggs who work to stop anti-voter bills like that.
Here in North Carolina, voting rights attorneys aren’t just lawyers. They’re often civil rights heroes. People like Julius Chambers, Thurgood Marshall, Al McSurely, and Adam Stein (by the way, that’s the father of Josh Stein, the Democrat running for NC governor).
Look, voting rights have been perpetually in jeopardy in the South, from the “Jim Crow” days to modern times. Supporters of Justice Allison Riggs say that having experience as a voting rights or civil rights attorney is the height of ethics in the legal profession. And it’s certainly not something that invalidates someone for a job on the state’s highest court.
Because fighting to preserve someone’s right to vote—that is, by definition, justice, right?
Riggs will be on the ballot for every North Carolinian this Election Day. For more info on Riggs and her opponent, Republican Jefferson Griffin, check out Cardinal & Pine’s 2024 Voter Hub.
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Since day one, our goal here at Cardinal & Pine has always been to empower people across the state with fact-based news and information. We believe that when people are armed with knowledge about what's happening in their local, state, and federal governments—including who is working on their behalf and who is actively trying to block efforts aimed at improving the daily lives of North Carolina families—they will be inspired to become civically engaged.
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