Press Release
April 22, 2025
NORTH CAROLINA – A bipartisan group of legal experts, former elected officials, and other government officers have filed an amicus brief with the federal district court for the Eastern District of North Carolina in the various cases concerning last year’s North Carolina Supreme Court election. After having lost on Election Day and in two recounts, candidate Judge Jefferson Griffin continues his effort to overturn the result of a free and fair election by seeking to throw out thousands of votes from a cherrypicked set of voters. Earlier this month, the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld two of Griffin’s three challenges, that unless addressed by federal courts, may result in tossing out thousands of votes based on rules that the state courts adopted for the first time after the election.
The brief argues that the North Carolina Supreme Court’s order violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the United States Constitution by requiring the presumptive invalidation of military and overseas votes that were not accompanied by a photo ID in only a small number of pro-Riggs counties, which left votes in the rest of North Carolina’s 100 counties untouched. This disparate treatment of votes flatly violates the standard set by Bush v. Gore. The order also violates Due Process because it invalidates votes based on rules that were never announced to voters; in fact, the voters Griffin challenges followed the rules provided by the election officials.
The brief was prepared by Norm Eisen, Pooja Chaudhuri, Jon Greenbaum, and Spencer Klein of State Democracy Defenders Fund on behalf of the amici listed below:
- Ty Cobb, Special Counsel to the President in the Trump Administration from 2017 to 2018
- Tom Coleman, Republican, Representative of the 6th District of Missouri from 1976 to 1993
- Barbara Comstock, Republican, Representative of the 10th Congressional District of Virginia from 2015 to 2019
- David Emery, Republican, Representative of the 1st Congressional District of Maine from 1975 to 1983
- Claudine Schneider, Republican, Representative of the Second District of Rhode Island from 1981 to 1991
- Peter Smith, Republican, Representative-at-Large of Vermont from 1989 to 1991
- Laurence H. Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University and former Director of the Office of Access to Justice in the U.S. Justice Department
- Joe Walsh, Republican, Representative of the 8th Congressional District of Illinois from 2011 to 2013
The amicus brief is HERE.
State Democracy Defenders Fund brings together a nonpartisan team to work with national, state, and local allies across the country to defend in real-time the foundation of our democracy — free and fair elections.