On February 26th 2024 The Democratic Women’s and Men hosted Judge Allison Riggs, incumbent candidate for NC Supreme Court. She delivered an overview of the current justice system in NC and shared her values and views on justice for all North Carolinians. Judge Riggs stayed after her talk to meet the many folks that attended. ALSO had a grassroots event, writing out over 500 postcards to Dems and UA voters under the age of 30 in Lincoln County. Many thanks to Gayle for the postcard organinzing and a special thanks to Beth Wise, Chair of the LCDP Womens group for hosting the event.
Judge Allison Riggs spoke about her credentials, the NC courts, and the NC Supreme Court office for which she is running. She is currently on the NC Supreme Court as an Associate Judge, through appointment by Governor Cooper. She is a candidate in the 2024 election for the NC Supreme Court judge position.
Originally from West Virginia, Judge Riggs received her bachelors, masters and Juris Doctor degree (law degree) from University of Florida. For 14 years, she was a civil rights attorney for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. She was responsible for writing the grant that created that coalition. She is a member of the League of Women Voters.
Her background is in fighting oppression in various ways. Working on and/or arguing in cases against gerrymandering, land rights, environmental law, community law – primarily through the appeals court. She argued the extreme 2014 voter suppression laws, specifically the voter id law that required non-expired drivers licenses. The plaintiff was a disabled man who could not drive, but for whom the right to vote was enormously important. As Judge Riggs stated, “the ‘I VOTED’ stickers were stuck all around his bedroom door”. As you are aware, they won that case, using the Reasonable Impediment Exception. Fast forward to our 2024 election in which it is estimated that 300,000 NC voters will have voter id issues.
Early on, Judge Riggs talked about the political party affiliation requirement that the NC GOP passed legislation in the 2014 – 2016 timeframe. Her opinion is that there should be no political party affiliation on a judge, in order to provide the Constitution’s checks and balances system. She also stated that a judge can not change this law. For this situation to be reversed, voters need to elect Democrat judges to gain a majority on the NC Supreme Court, and Democrat representatives to get a majority in both the NC House and NC Senate. Then, the NC legislative body would have the opportunity to reverse the party affiliation requirement on NC judges. To help achieve this goal & get the best for NC justice system, Judge Riggs encouraged NC voters to keep Judge Carolyn Thompson, and elect both Martin Moore and Ed Eldred.
She also suggested the Lincoln County democrats enlist the help of Vote Riders, to get people to wherever they could get an acceptable picture ID and/or to get them to the voting locations. Here is that organization’s website: https://www.voteriders.org/
By contrast to Judge Riggs … One of Judge Riggs’ GOP challengers, Jefferson Griffin, has published a judgment that there is no racial inequity in the justice system. Another of his judgments would allow a child to be taken away from his mother even before it is born. His motto is “sweep the courts”, meaning what exactly? Make the courts totally partisan? That would benefit no one in North Carolina.