Those of you shacking up, have no fear: A judge has thrown out a 201-year-old North Carolina law making it illegal for unmarried couples to live together.

Superior Court Judge Benjamin Alford of New Bern struck down the law as unconstitutional in a handwritten ruling released Thursday. A final order has not yet been written.

Debora Lynn Hobbs, a Pender County emergency dispatcher, filed the constitutional challenge last year after Sheriff Carson Smith discovered she had a live-in boyfriend and gave her an ultimatum: marry, move or leave her job. In 2004, Hobbs' lawsuit says, she was "forced involuntarily to terminate her employment." Hobbs didn't sue to get her job back but for a ruling on the law.

"I am absolutely thrilled with the court's decision," Hobbs, 41, said in a statement. "I just didn't think it was any of my employer's business whether I was married or not, as long as I was good at my job, and I am happy that no one else will ever have to be subjected to this law. I couldn't believe that I was being given this ultimatum to choose between my boyfriend or my livelihood because the sheriff was enforcing a 201-year-old law that clearly violates my civil rights."

Others were less thrilled. "I think it's terrible," said the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina.

"It was simply judicial activism at its best. That knocked down the law that is a cornerstone of state marriage policy. The law emphasizes that marriage is the family structure that ought to be encouraged because that is the best institution for family, children and society."

"What the judge actually did was undermine marriage," said Creech, who cited studies that concluded that those who live together first before marriage are less likely to stay married.

She represents many

Hobbs is one of about 148,000 people living as part of a couple out of wedlock in the state, according to the U.S. Census. North Carolina is among about half a dozen states with a law forbidding unmarried couples to live under the same roof. The law was rarely enforced. Between 1997 and 2003, 35 North Carolinians were charged with violating it, but only seven were convicted.

"I think it's an archaic, vestigial piece of ridiculousness," said Jay O'Berski, a lecturing fellow at Duke University who teaches drama.

O'Berski, 36, has lived with his girlfriend in Durham for one year and dated her for a year before that.

"We have no intention of getting married," he said. "We are committed, and we live like married people."

Sheriff Smith could not be reached for comment Thursday. Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for the N.C. Attorney General's Office, said its lawyers are reviewing the ruling and no decision has been made about whether the state will appeal it. Pender County Attorney Trey Thurman said the county is not likely to appeal.

"There is nothing that has said Sheriff Carson Smith has done anything wrong," Thurman said. "There has just been a declaration that a statute was unconstitutional. Now, it wouldn't be anything he would enforce."

Both sides appeared before the judge earlier this week in Pender County. The state's lawyers had argued that Hobbs couldn't challenge the law because she hadn't been charged with a crime.

Hobbs' American Civil Liberties Union lawyers had argued that the law conflicted with a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down Texas' sodomy law and created a right to sexual privacy.

"The Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas stands for the proposition 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, which represented Hobbs. "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."