You can read the detailed analysis at this link. Here is the core holding:

The court concludes that the retroactive invalidation of absentee ballots cast by overseas military and civilian voters violates their substantive due process rights, and that the cure process violates their equal protection rights. The court further concludes that the lack of any cure process for individuals erroneously designated as Never Residents violates their procedural due process rights and represents an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote. Based on those conclusions, the State Board may not implement the stated cure process or “remove” the votes of all Never Residents “from the final count of the 2024 election for Supreme Court Seat 6.”

In the remedy portion of the order, the court orders Justice Riggs to be certified the winner. The ruling is on hold for 7 days to give Judge Griffin a chance to appeal to the 4th Circuit (and then potentially to the U.S. Supreme Court).

I expect any appeal would be rejected. Although part of the due process portion of the court’s analysis rests on Bush v. Gore, and not every court would agree on reading Bush v. Gore in this way, the due process arguments are nonetheless extremely strong even without relying on that case. And the equal protection arguments are even stronger.

The idea of retroactively changing the rules for which ballots should count—and applying those retroactive rules just selectively in places where the challenging candidate expects to gain relative votes—sure is unconstitutional in any election system that values the rule of law. The only surprise (and disappointment) here is that the North Carolina Supreme Court was willing to bless this attempted election subversion.