Allison Riggs
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Allison Riggs | |
|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) Riggs in 2025 | |
| Associate Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court | |
| Assumed office September 13, 2023 | |
| Appointed by | Roy Cooper |
| Preceded by | Michael R. Morgan |
| Judge of the North Carolina Court of Appeals | |
| In office January 1, 2023 – September 13, 2023 | |
| Appointed by | Roy Cooper |
| Preceded by | Richard Dietz |
| Succeeded by | Carolyn Thompson |
| Personal details | |
| Born | May 8, 1981 |
| Party | Democratic |
| Education | University of Florida (BA, MA, JD) |
Allison Jean Riggs (born May 8, 1981)[1] is an American state court judge who is an associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. She was appointed by Governor Roy Cooper in 2023 and retained her seat in the 2024 election.[2]
Riggs has served as co-leader of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, North Carolina, and has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in a Texas redistricting case in 2018 and a North Carolina redistricting case in 2019.[3][4]
Riggs was born in New York, and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia.[5][6] Her father is a US Navy veteran,[7] who worked at West Virginia University.[5] She is the eldest of four children,[7] one brother, who also served in the military,[7] and three sisters.[5] She attended private school until middle school, and then went to the local public high school, where she was a National Merit Scholar.[5]
Riggs earned her Bachelor of Arts in Microbiology from the University of Florida in 2003.[8] As an undergraduate, she researched the effect of recreational drugs, such as MDMA, on brain structures.[6] For graduate school, she continued at the University of Florida and received a Master's degree in History in 2006, and a Juris Doctor in 2009.[8][4][9] In law school, she became involved in voting rights efforts.[7] She served as president of the American Constitution Society and invested in the Restoration of Civil Rights Clinic.[5] During her law school summers, she worked at the UNC School of Government and in the North Carolina Attorney General’s office.[5]
Career
In 2009, Riggs joined the Voting Rights Program at Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, North Carolina.[10] As part of her various roles, she was responsible for writing the grant that created the organization.[9] During her tenure,[11] she served as a staff attorney, senior attorney, chief counsel for Voting Rights,[12] interim executive director, and co-executive director.[10][13]
Notable cases
- Riggs was part of the legal team that filed a lawsuit challenging North Carolina's voter law signed by North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory in August 2013. The case was League of Women Voters of North Carolina, et al. v. North Carolina.[14][15][16]
- In 2018, Riggs argued for the plaintiffs in Abbott v. Perez. The case involved a challenge to Texas's 2013 redistricting plan as unlawfully based on race, violating the Fourteenth Amendment's prohibition on racial gerrymandering and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Split 5-4 along ideological lines, the Court upheld Texas's redistricting as lawful because the state was entitled to legislative good faith, and the plaintiffs could not meet their burden of proof.[17]
- In 2021, Riggs was part of the legal team in Judicial Watch v. North Carolina. The suit was to compel the State of North Carolina, the North Carolina State Board of Elections, the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections, and the Guilford County Board of Elections to comply with their voter rolls maintenance and record production obligations under Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.[18][19]
