BURGAW, N.C. A woman who says she was pushed out of her job with the Pender County sheriff's department because she lived with her boyfriend wants her day in court. Lawyers for Debora Hobbs argued in court today that a judge should allow the lawsuit to move forward.
Hobbs says she quit working for Pender County after Sheriff Carson Smith told her to leave her live-in boyfriend, marry him or find a new job.
The sheriff and representatives of state Attorney General Roy Cooper argued that Hobbs has no standing to sue them.
The sheriff's lawyer argues that Smith was merely enforcing a 200-year-old state law that prohibits unmarried couples from living together.Cooper's counsel says challenges to a criminal law have only been allowed when a criminal complaint has been filed or is threatened. Hobbs hasn't been charged with a crime nor is she threatened with arrest.
The American Civil Liberties Union is representing Hobbs in the case. A-C-L-U state executive director Jennifer Rudinger says her client could be charged at any time.
The rarely enforced cohabitation law carries a fine of up to a thousand dollars and as up to 60 days in jail.
Details here from the AP via WWAY TV 3.
The ACLU responds thusly:
"The Supreme Court has made it clear that the government has no business regulating relationships between two consenting adults in the privacy of their own home," said Jennifer Rudinger, Executive Director of the ACLU of North Carolina. "North Carolina's cohabitation law is not only patently unconstitutional, but the idea that the government would criminalize people's choice to live together out of wedlock in this day and age defies logic and common sense."
I agree. Indeed, I cohabitated with a girlfriend for the entire three years of law school "without the benefit of clergy" (as my grandmother liked to put it).