Appeals court tries to untangle litigation over pending North Carolina court election A federal appeals panel exchanged arguments Monday with lawyers over a still-unresolved November election for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat, immersed in jurisdictional questions over which courts should determine whether roughly 66,000 ballots should have been counted.
Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, heard, among others, from attorneys for Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs, trailing Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin and the State Board of Elections, which last month dismissed Griffin's demand that the ballots get removed from their race tally.
The panel did not indicate when it will rule following 90 minutes of oral arguments over whether Griffin's efforts to remove the ballots should be heard in federal court or remain in state court.
For now, Griffin's challenges sit simultaneously in federal and state court systems — an unusual situation following weeks of legal motions and orders over the election in the ninth-largest state.
The back-and-forth between the judges and the attorneys arguing before them Monday emphasized what could be described as arcane matters over when state-law matters can be moved to federal courts or returned to state courts.
