Justice Delayed
The politics of foot-dragging
It’s been 80-some days since Allison Riggs was elected to retain her seat on the North Carolina State Supreme Court. Did she win? Of course. It was close, but that’s not unusual in our Supreme Court’s history. The current Republican Chief Justice, Paul Newby, won his race against Democrat Cheri Beasley by 401 votes. Riggs is currently leading against her opponent, Republican Jefferson Griffin, by 734 votes (out of 5.7 million votes cast statewide).
In the earlier Beasley/Newby contest, both candidates protested the outcome. Newby hung his hat on protests that targeted Democratic/Black voters, while Beasley’s protests were aimed at restoring ballots that were thrown out, and (not surprisingly) did not focus on Republican voters. Beasley conceded after a recount. Griffin is reprising Newby’s tactics, at least insofar as his protests disproportionately focus on Black voters, per the News & Observer. Griffin, for reasons discussed below, is not about to give up.
There’s plenty of information to go around about all the chess moves in this case -- it’s been to the State Board of Elections, the U.S. District Court, the State Supreme Court, and now, back to the State courts AND the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Some of us get all in the weeds watching these legal maneuvers and listening to the arguments, but what really matters is “Why?”
Because Judge Jefferson Griffin is a stalking horse for ascendent MAGA populism, and they are the State-sanctioned party. Barring usurpation by the Federal Courts, this case can only have one outcome – Griffin wins. If he wins on the merits of his case, the list of eligible voters narrows in the MAGA Party’s favor. If he loses on the merits, he wins on the strength of that extremist party’s gerrymandered dominance of North Carolina.
The State Supreme Court could have acted semi-unilaterally last week (Riggs is recused, there is one remaining Democrat among the other six Justices), by simply finding in Griffin’s favor. “Too soon,” I’m imagining they whispered to one another. The case, in legal terms, is not yet “ripe,” and besides, the optics of allowing Griffin to skip to the head of the line are bad. They told Griffin to take his lawsuit up in Wake County Superior Court.
What the hell, why not? It drags the case out longer, which suits their political purposes. As dissenting Democratic Justice Anita Earls observed, ““If any losing candidate can make any sort of argument about votes in the election, no matter how frivolous, and automatically receive a court-ordered stay on appeal, preventing the winning candidate from being certified, nothing stops litigious losers from preventing duly elected persons from taking office for months or longer.”[1]
If Griffin loses at trial on all counts, he still has an appeal to the State Court of Appeals. Of the 15 judges serving that body, 12 (including Griffin) are MAGA. Can’t lose there, and if he does, it only takes one protest by the 3-Judge panel hearing his case to toss the matter back to the State Supreme Court. For Griffin, it’s a lot like twiddling your thumbs until the penalty clock runs out and you get back in the game.
No reason to rush out and get hurt. The fix is already in.
[1] Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article299025270.html#storylink=cpy
I don’t think I can adequately say how much I despise Jeffy. His play is right out of the monster’s playbook. It’s as blatant a display by all these right wingers how they intend on bringing, first, North Carolinians, but then the rest of the country, to heel. There’s an authoritarian breaking all sorts of laws as he fires, shuts down and causes all sorts of hell and mayhem. The Project 2025 was wide open for all to see but the intense voter suppression effort by republicans in high places combined with all the dark and not-so-dark money that was liberally scattered on all the four winds, a lot of the good men and women fell amid all the mayhem.
It’s said that you don’t know what you had until it’s gone. This country was founded on a gossamer of, for the time, very progressive ideas. That it’s held together this long speaks highly for every man, woman and child who gave their all to make it work. We’re witnessing what damage a blowtorch will do now; two years short of our 250th birthday. How sad.
Amen, friend.