Possibly some 148,000 people in North Carolina sighed a collective sigh of relief last week, but it's equally possible they didn't even know they were violating a state law.  According to the Raleigh, North Carolina News & Observer, there was a law in that state preventing unmarried couples from living together.  It was enacted 201 years ago.  Estimates are there were 148,000 people involved in allegedly violating that law, even though they likely didn't know it.

Surprisingly, seven people were convicted of violating that law between 1997 and 2003, according to the newspaper.  Side note here:  how an odd number of people could be convicted leads to two possible conclusions:  either one person was wrongly convicted or the law is not limited to couples.  You figure it out.

One of those unmarried people decided to challenge that law, however.  When Debora Lynn Hobbs, a Pender County emergency dispatcher for the Sheriff's Department quit her job over Sheriff Carson Smith's ultimatum that she get married or leave the job, she sued to declare the law unconstitutional.  Local Superior Court Judge Benjamin Alford overturned the law as unconstitutional.  The North Carolina Attorney General is reviewing the decision and considering an appeal.