1805 law against cohabiting challenged in N. Carolina

RALEIGH, N.C. -- There are some 144,000 unmarried couples living together in North Carolina, and they are all breaking the law -- a statute that has been on the books since 1805.

The law against cohabitation is rarely enforced. But now the American Civil Liberties Union is suing to overturn it altogether, on behalf of a former sheriff's dispatcher who says she had to quit her job because she wouldn't marry her live-in boyfriend.

Deborah Hobbs, 40, says her boss, Sheriff Carson Smith of Pender County, near Wilmington, told her to get married, move out or find another job after he found out she and her boyfriend had been living together for three years. The couple did not want to get married, so Hobbs quit.

7 states have statute snip

''Certainly the government has no business regulating relationships between consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes,'' said Jennifer Rudinger, state executive director of the ACLU. ''This law is 200 years old and a lot of people are very surprised that we even have it on the books.''

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