Posted on 03/29/2005 6:26:35 PM PST by SmithL
WILMINGTON, N.C. - A former sheriff's dispatcher who quit her job after her boss found out she lived with her boyfriend is challenging North Carolina's law against cohabitation.
Debora Hobbs said she was told to get married, move out, or find another job after her boss found out about her living situation. The legal arm of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina filed the lawsuit Monday on her behalf.
The lawsuit seeks to abolish the nearly 200-year-old - and rarely enforced - law that prohibits unmarried, unrelated adults of the opposite sex from living together. North Carolina is one of seven states with such a law.
Convicted offenders face a fine and up to 60 days in jail.
"The government has no business meddling in the private relationships of consenting adults," said Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the ACLU-NC Legal Foundation.
Hobbs had been living with her boyfriend for about three years when she was hired as a Pender County 911 dispatcher in February 2004. The couple decided they didn't want to marry; Hobbs quit last May rather than be fired.
Sheriff Carson Smith said last year that Hobbs' employment was a moral issue as well as a legal question. He said he tries to avoid hiring people who openly live together, but that he doesn't send out deputies to enforce the law.
Hobbs declined to comment Monday. Rudinger said she is employed and still lives with her boyfriend.
Neither the sheriff nor Pender County Attorney Trey Thurman would comment.
There are many laws that have been on the books that have never been challenged. My point is that when this law is challenged, it will fall. I see it as open and shut.
I am fairly certain that the concept pf freedom of association is in the Constitution. I will have to research. Until then, i stand corrected.
I am fairly certain that the concept of freedom of association is in the Constitution. I will have to research. Until then, I stand corrected.
If she was breaking the law, she should not be employed in a government agency.
States have the right to regulate in this area. It would be hard to get such a law paseed today, but I like it, inconvenient as it would have made things for me in my wilder days. However, I am not sympathetic with cohabitors, because they are generally selfish and irresponsible. The state has an interest in encouraging people instead to be industrious and responsible.
Libertarians think that such cohabitation should be allowed, and thus they encourage a culture of people who are essentially overgrown spoiled children. The effect of having a population of that sort is national disaster.
I hope that those responsible enjoy what is coming.
I do believe in employment at will in the productive (private) sector, but suspect it may be too good for public servants.
It used to be that women were not considered anything but property ie in earlier domestic violence cases men would be charged with "Abusing Livestock" when hurting women. Now we can go to war die for our country but we better not be unwed and living with a man. Shame Shame and I would have thought after all these years we have evolved some over the course of 100 years! Living in sin?? Let he has sinned not cast the first stone...Yeah I don't hear any stones hitting dirt.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
I could live with that. I have a close family member to whom it would apply in spades.
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