A woman is suing the North Carolina Board of Elections over state law that largely bans photography at polling places after she took a selfie with her ballot in March.

The lawsuit was filed by Susan Hogarth in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

At the heart of the lawsuit is a letter Hogarth says she received from the North Carolina State Board of Elections, demanding that she remove a post on X that included a selfie she took with her completed ballot during the March primary election.

She says the letter and the laws underlying it are unconstitutional. She is suing the Wake County Board of Elections and the Board of Elections.

Hogarth, a Wake County resident, took a “ballot selfie” in her voting booth on March 5, the lawsuit says. She then posted her selfie on X, endorsing presidential and gubernatorial candidates from the Libertarian Party — something she does to “challenge the narrative that voters can only vote for major party candidates,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit states that two weeks later, Hogarth received a letter from a state election investigator telling her to remove the post or face misdemeanor charges. Hogarth refused.

“It would have been easier to just delete the post,” Hogarth said in a statement. “But in a free society, you should be able to show the world how you voted without fear of punishment.”

Photographing and filming voters at a polling place is mostly illegal in North Carolina unless a “chief election judge of the precinct” grants permission. Photographing completed ballots is also prohibited under state law.

One reason for banning election photos, according to the State Election Commission, is to prevent them from being used “as proof of voting for a candidate in a vote-buying scheme.”

The North Carolina State and Wake County Election Commissions declined to comment on the litigation.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, most states have passed laws allowing selfies and other photographs while voting.

In some states, such as Arizona, photography is prohibited within a certain radius of a polling place. In other states, such as Indiana, laws against photographing ballots have been struck down by federal judges because they were found to be unconstitutional.

Now Hogarth and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression are trying the same thing in North Carolina.

FIRE claims that North Carolina’s election photography laws violate the First Amendment. The lawsuit adds that the state must demonstrate genuine concerns about vote-buying schemes that outweigh the right to free speech.

“Voting selfie bans turn innocent Americans into criminals simply for expressing their enthusiasm for voting or simply showing that they voted,” said Jeff Zeman, attorney at FIRE. “This is core political speech, protected by the First Amendment.”

The plaintiff’s goal is to stop enforcement of the law before the November general election, in part because Hogarth is running for a seat in the state legislature as a Libertarian Party candidate and plans to take another selfie to promote herself, the complaint says.