Legal Question in Constitutional Law in North Carolina

Re: title 18,4248

I haven't researched this and don't know if the statute actually has been deemed unconstitutional, but for purposes of this response I will presume that it has.

The court case which deemed the statute unconstitutional must have been decided *after* the statute was enacted. Federal courts don't rule on the constitutionality of proposed statutes, so the ruling you describe could not have been made before the law was enacted. Every statute that is ruled unconstitutional (and every statute that isn't) had previously been enacted into law as part of some legislative act.

Keep in mind that, unless the U.S. Supreme Court declares a statute unconstitutional, the statute has not been invalidated. If a federal district court (the trial courts in the federal system) or even a circuit court of appeal issues such a ruling, that ruling applies only within the jurisdiction of the particular court that issued it. Other courts may see things differently. Some may not have ruled on the issue at all.

Also, it is common for statutes to be held unconstitutional only as applied in certain types of situations. Such a ruling does not mean the statute is inherently unconstitutional. Instead, it means only that the statute can't be used in particular ways.

Finally, it is also common for only a portion of a statute to be deemed unconstitutional. The rest of the statute would generally not be affected by such a ruling.