Atheist barred from office in North Carolina?

A strange story surrounding a North Carolina city council election has suddenly become national news.  Cecil Bothwell won his election fairly, a fact no one disputes.  However, the former head of the Asheville NAACP has attempted to block Bothwell’s seating by pointing out an obscure clause in North Carolina’s state constitution that bars atheists from holding public office.  The dispute will likely have to be settled in federal court:

“I’m not saying that Cecil Bothwell is not a good man, but if he’s an atheist, he’s not eligible to serve in public office, according to the state constitution,” said H.K. Edgerton, a former Asheville NAACP president.

Article 6, section 8 of the state constitution says: “The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”

Rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution trump the restriction in the state constitution, said Bob Orr, executive director of the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law.

“I think there’s any number of federal cases that would view this as an imposition of a religious qualification and violate separation of church and state,” said Orr, a former state Supreme Court justice.

Some confusion over Bothwell’s actual status has arisen since then.  Bothwell doesn’t like the term “atheist,” preferring “post-theist” instead.  He lists himself as an atheist on his Myspace page.  Bothwell also denied the specific charge of “deny[ing] the being of Almighty God,” saying that the question is irrelevant for his public office.

But it’s not as if this was something voters didn’t know before the election.  Bothwell’s opponents attacked him for a book that he had written called The Prince of War that attacked Billy Graham for pursuing a “theocratic agenda.”  Bothwell apparently isn’t bright enough to understand the difference between public policy in a democracy and a real theocracy (like Iran), but voters had the opportunity to take that under consideration as well.  They chose Bothwell, “post-theism” and all.

The state constitution does bar publicly-avowed atheists from holding office, but Article 6, Section 8 won’t withstand court scrutiny.  The Supreme Court has already overturned Maryland’s constitutional bar for public office on religious affiliation in 1961, and North Carolina will lose this one, too.  The federal constitution bars religious tests for office, which will trump North Carolina’s Section 8, probably on a unanimous vote.  For those who may be tempted to argue federalism, the incorporation doctrine that would appear to dictate that outcome in this case is also the same line of thought that the court used to dismiss gun bans as a violation of the Second Amendment.

This is a foolish and wrong-headed objection to the outcome of a fair election.  Unlike some other laws the courts have tossed for merely being stupid, this one is also unconstitutional and should be eliminated.  The people of North Carolina would be well advised to repeal it themselves and to let Bothwell take his place on the city council.

I’m still mystified as to why a former head of the NAACP would bother to inject himself into this situation at all.

Update: Plenty of schadenfreude for atheists in this thread, but commenter Good Lt reminds them of what’s at stake:

Let’s flip it around for the people claiming “haha serves atheists right!” here.

If a deist or a believer (of any faith) was barred from serving in office in a state Constitution, would you support the restriction? If a clan of Dawkins worshipers managed to get a state constitution changed to put this restriction in, would you shrug and just say, “eh, whatever?”

Don’t think that wouldn’t get tried, either.