The N.C. Supreme Court has reversed a ruling from the N.C. Court of Appeals involving a DWI stop by a Davidson College campus police officer.
The Court of Appeals had thrown out the 2006 drunk-driving case. Appellate judges had agreed with the driver’s argument that the Constitution’s Establishment Clause prevented an officer from a school with a religious affiliation from performing law-enforcement functions.
The state’s highest court didn’t buy that argument. Writing for the court, Justice Mark Martin concludes:
The Campus Police Act’s provision of secular, neutral, and nonideological police protection for the benefit of the students, faculty, and staff of Davidson College, as applied to defendant’s conviction for driving while impaired, does not offend the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Defendant has failed to demonstrate that her arrest and conviction for driving while impaired were influenced by any consideration other than secular enforcement of a criminal statute, N.C.G.S. § 20-138.1.
