the North Carolina General Statutes: An Alienation of Affections suit may be brought against an employer if one of these three circumstances is evident. The employer authorized the employee's acts; The employee's acts were committed within the scope of his employment and in furtherance of the employer's business; or The employer ratifies the employee's acts. Each of the three limitations arose from a recent North Carolina legal case involving the tort. In Jones v. Skelly, N.C.App. 2009, the North Carolina Court of Appeals had held that the tort applies even to legally separated spouses. In Mesenheimer v. Burris, N.C. 2006, the North Carolina Supreme Court held that the statute of limitation commences when the affair should have been discovered rather than when it occurred. In Smith v. Lee, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78987, the Federal District Court for the Western District of North Carolina noted that the question of whether an employer could be held liable for an affair conducted by an employee (e.g. while on a business trip for the employer) was still unsettled in North Carolina. There is often confusion over where an employee's "scope of employment" ends. An example of this would be a minister having sex with a person that has been receiving counseling services from that minister. In theory the minister is acting within the scope of employment because it is their duty to provide these counseling services and it is through these services that they gain access to the victim. In 2014, Resident Superior Court Judge John O. Craig dismissed the case of Rothrock v. Cooke, ruling that the state's criminal conversion and alienation of affection laws were unconstitutional, infringing up on 1st and 14th amendment rights in the U.S. Constitution. That case was not appealed. In 2017, the North Carolina Court of Appeals, in a different case, ruled that the common law cause of action of alienation of affection was not facially invalid under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. In 2017 the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled in a 3-0 decision to uphold the constitutionality of the tort. See Malecek v. Williams 807 S.E.2d 574. South Dakota In 2002 the law was reworded to be gender-neutral, allowing wives to sue another woman. A man was awarded $950,000, later reduced to $400,000, in a 2002 case in which a South Dakota jury ruled that an orthopedic surgeon from Las Vegas had enticed the