The hotly disputed 2024 North Carolina Supreme Court race that RedState has extensively covered has now concluded, with GOP candidate Jefferson Griffin conceding after a U.S. District court judge's ruling on Monday that rejected his ballot arguments and effectively overturned an early April ruling by the state's highest court that some political observers suggested could have paved the way for his election victory.

In a statement issued Wednesday, Court of Appeals Judge Griffin said, “While I do not fully agree with the District Court’s analysis, I respect the court’s holding, just as I have respected every judicial tribunal that has heard this case."

"I will not appeal the court’s decision," Griffin also wrote, which now paves the way for Democrat NC Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs' 734-vote victory margin to be certified by the state board of elections.

BREAKING: Jefferson Griffin has conceded to Allison Riggs in the State Supreme Court race. Griffin says he will not appeal @wsoctv pic.twitter.com/D16BS9y23g

— Joe Bruno (@JoeBrunoWSOC9) May 7, 2025

SEE ALSO: What's Going On? Terrible Optics From NC Board of Elections As Supreme Court Race Still Not Decided

Griffin's challenges centered around voters who his legal team said had incorrect/incomplete voter registration information or didn't include a photo ID (the latter of which were related to overseas absentee ballots, including some "Never Residents" who have never lived in the state). Griffin contended that these issues, which involved some 65,000 ballots, should be decided by state courts since they involved questions about the partisan Democrat-controlled NC Board of Elections' interpretations of state election laws, interpretations Griffin argued had been either inconsistent or counter to state law and the state constitution.

In his Monday ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Myers from the Eastern District of NC argued against the state's highest court's April decision that whittled down the challenges to roughly 5,000 overseas ballots that they ruled at the time must be cured in a 30-day time frame or tossed out:

“IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the 1. Retroactive invalidation of absentee ballots cast by overseas military and civilian voters violates those voters’ substantive due process rights; 2. The cure process violates the equal protection rights of overseas military and civilian voters; and 3. The lack of any notice or opportunity for eligible voters to contest their mistaken designation as Never Residents violates procedural due process and represents an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote,” Myers wrote.

Myers, a 2019 Trump appointee, also wrote that the time to "change" election rules was before the game and not after, a characterization Griffin's team likely would dispute, considering their contention that election laws were not being followed to begin with:

“You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done,” Myers wrote in a 68-page order.

“Permitting parties to ‘upend the set rules’ of an election after the election has taken place can only produce ‘confusion and turmoil’” that “‘threatens to undermine public confidence in the federal courts, state agencies, and the elections themselves,’” he added while citing other cases.

That said, Myers also added this regarding previous court rulings, including the NC Supreme Court's and another one from April from the NC Court of Appeals:

In light of the foregoing, this court wishes (again) to make clear that its order does not implicate North Carolina’s authority to interpret state law or implement state election procedures prospectively. Likewise, this order does not question the North Carolina Court of Appeals and Supreme Court’s interpretation of North Carolina election law, and is in no way “a backhanded critique of the merits of’ those decisions. 

Put in layman's terms, Carolina Journal's Andy Jackson explained what needs to happen going forward:

First, the new SBE majority that takes office on May 7 and the state director it appoints on the same day should heed the state Supreme Court before the 2026 election. They must obtain the legally required identification numbers for voter registrations that lack them; require voter ID for all ballots, including military and overseas; and create a process for counties to provide federal-only ballots to people who have never resided in North Carolina.

The procedural, due process, and equal protection arguments that stopped Griffin’s 2024 post-election claims at the state and federal levels will not protect the SBE against 2026 pre-election claims on those same issues.

Thanks to an unrelated court ruling, the new SBE will now have three Republicans and two Democrats, and will need to get to work quickly on these matters.

Though some liberally biased media outlets in North Carolina have claimed that Jefferson's campaign was "unprecedented" in its post-election actions, it wasn't, as there were two statewide election cases in the early 2000s in North Carolina that were disputed by the losing candidate well after the race and into the following year, with one race - the Superintendent of Public Instruction - actually ending up being decided by the then-Democrat-controlled North Carolina General Assembly in the Democrat candidate's favor some five months after the election was held.

With Riggs' apparent win, the balance of North Carolina's Supreme Court remains at 5-2 GOP, with the other Democrat (Anita Earls) up for reelection in 2026 and three of the Republicans up for reelection in 2028.

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