One of the NC legislature’s biggest legal foes is about to have more power over them

One of the state legislature’s main adversaries in court will soon have the power to decide whether its actions are legal, Gov. Roy Cooper announced Thursday.

Cooper said he will appoint Allison Riggs to the N.C. Court of Appeals to replace Judge Richard Dietz, who in November won election to the N.C. Supreme Court.

Riggs is the top voting rights attorney and co-executive director at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. For years, whenever anyone has sued the Republican-led legislature over issues like gerrymandering and voter ID, her group has often been involved in leading the lawsuits — some of which have gone all the way to the nation’s highest court.

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“Allison Riggs is a brilliant attorney and an experienced litigator who has spent her career fighting for fairness and defending people’s constitutional rights,” Cooper wrote in a press release. “I am confident that she will continue to serve our state with distinction and be a great asset to the bench.”

Dietz’s seat on the appeals court will become vacant in January, when he’s sworn in to the Supreme Court in January, at which point Cooper plans to name Riggs to the court.

Dietz is a Republican, and Riggs is a Democrat. Still, one seat flipping will not change the overall partisan balance of the Court of Appeals, which has 15 judges who typically hear cases in groups of three. It will continue to have a Republican majority.

“I can’t wait to roll my sleeves up and get to work in service of this state,” Riggs said in a text to The News & Observer. “And start talking to voters about why state courts matter.”

Riggs was involved in the litigation about the “independent state legislature” theory that Republican lawmakers recently brought to the U.S. Supreme Court in Moore v. Harper, after Riggs’ clients won a gerrymandering lawsuit against the legislature earlier this year.

She took over the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice after its founder, Anita Earls, was elected to the N.C. Supreme Court in 2018.

Spokespeople for Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday afternoon. The two leaders have faced numerous lawsuits filed by Riggs’ group.

“We have three independent branches of government and the judiciary plays an important role in ensuring that the rule of law keeps our state moving forward and protects our citizens,” Riggs wrote in a press release. “Moreover, the judiciary serves a critical role in ensuring that equal justice for all is a reality for all, not just some.”

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