North Carolina Election Denier Has Confederate Past
CONTACT
Zack Ford, Press Secretary
(202) 464-7370 / zack.ford@afjac.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WASHINGTON, D.C., March 28, 2025 – Today the Associated Press reported that North Carolina Judge Jefferson Griffin, who is currently trying to invalidate 60,000 legitimately cast votes to overturn a state supreme court election he lost, has a history of praising the Confederacy and posing with the Confederate flag in Confederate garb. The photos come from his undergraduate days (1999–2003) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when he was a member — and president — of the Kappa Alpha Order, a fraternity that was “spiritually founded” by Robert E. Lee and that has long championed the false history of the Southern “Lost Cause.”
While Griffin now claims the decision was “inappropriate,” a fellow member claims that he was adamant at the time about retaining the tradition when many chapters were abandoning it. In high school, Griffin had also written that Robert E. Lee was his number one choice on an “ideal guest list” for a party.
Tish Gotell Faulks, state courts director at Alliance for Justice Action Campaign, issued the following statement:
“When Jefferson Griffin was my student in constitutional law at North Carolina Central University School of Law, one of five HBCU law schools in the country, I taught that democracy must be delicately balanced. As lawyers, my students needed to understand that they were entering into a social contract to protect the interests of the people they serve, even at the expense of their own preferences. In his attempt to disenfranchise 60,000 voters, a disproportionate number of whom are people of color, Griffin is clearly violating that contract to propel his own legal career. Troublingly, it appears his biases against our democracy and the validity of every vote are more deep-seated than we previously realized. If Griffin truly cares about shedding the Confederate worship of his past, then he owes it to North Carolina to end his months-long voter suppression effort and allow democracy to prevail.”
