RALEIGH, N.C. – North Carolinians in same-sex relationships now can get help in avoiding possible domestic abuse.
The NC Supreme Court on Friday upheld a ruling by the Court of Appeals in 2020 that said the state’s law prohibiting members of the LBGTQ community from getting a restraining order against a partner is unconstitutional.
The opinion by that original 3-judge panel, by a 2-1 margin, overturned an earlier decision in Wake County District Court and said LGBTQ people have the same rights to protect themselves as everyone else.
The Supreme Court’s ruling, after a hearing on Jan. 11, was, 4-3, with four Democrats voting for it and three Republicans dissenting.
NC Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat who had entered a brief in support of the appellate court’s ruling, on his Twitter feed called this “an important win for equality in NC. … It doesn’t matter who you are – every person in NC deserves to be treated equally under the law & safe from their abusers.”
Associate Justice Robin Hudson, in writing the NC Supreme Court’s opinion, cited problems with the dissent in the appellate court’s ruling and agreed that the U.S. Supreme Court’s judgment in 2015 that said bans on same-sex marriages were unconstitutional thus established the constitutional right to have the protective order in same-sex relationships.
The appellate court’s decision also had cited expanded views of LBGTQ rights as established in an opinion by Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch in the Bostock v. Clayton County case from 2020.
Associate Justice Phil Berger Jr. of Eden wrote in dissent, joined by Chief Justice Paul Newby and joined by Associate Justice Tamara Barringer, that procedural issues should have invalidated the suit and its appeal and that the statute does not preclude following the rules of civil procedure.
The original challenge was built on a case involving two women, who had been dating until their relationship ended in 2018. One woman said the other became “verbally and physically threatening toward the plaintiff,” and she sought a domestica partner protection order.
The trial court told her that because they were both women and “only dating,” they were not in what the law describes as a “personal relationship,” Hudson’s opinion described.
That would mean they would have been married or divorced, were of the “opposite sex” and living or had lived together, were related or had a child in common. So the application for the order was denied.
North Carolina was the only state to have a statute prohibiting such options for same-sex relationships. Stein and Gov. Roy Cooper, his predecessor as attorney general, both said they thought the law was unconstitutional. The court’s opinion notes that South Carolina more recently had removed its statute.
Source: Fox 8 News Channel
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