Yes. Nothing about the pending felony charge stops LaKesha Womack from being sworn in when the new Congress convenes on January 3, and she is expected to take her seat for North Carolina's 14th District as planned. A criminal charge is an accusation, not a conviction: the Constitution sets the qualifications for the House — at least 25 years old, seven years a citizen, a resident of the state — and a felony charge is not among the disqualifications. As the Charlotte Observer's reporting, carried by WUNC, puts it, a charge or even a conviction would not automatically remove a member from Congress. Only the House itself can expel a member, and that takes a two-thirds vote of the full chamber. Womack's immediate date is not in Washington but in Charlotte: she is due in Mecklenburg County District Court on Tuesday, November 10, exactly one week after she unseated Republican Representative Tim Moore.
The plain reality is that the voters of the 14th District have already judged this case once. Womack beat Moore 51.1 percent to 48.9 percent — 147,388 votes to 140,973, a margin of 6,415 out of 288,361 cast, with all 142 precincts reporting, according to Decision Desk HQ — in a district Moore himself helped draw as North Carolina House speaker and won by nearly 15 points in 2024. She raised about $56,000 to Moore's $1.9 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings. And the charge was no secret on election day: a summons first issued in January 2020 and returned unserved the next month sat dormant for more than six years, then was reissued and served on Womack by a Polk County sheriff's deputy on October 11, at her own party's fall rally, four days before early voting began. Moore's campaign built its closing advertising on it. The district heard all of it, and elected her anyway.
And I did not know that they had filed a case against me for this because again, I was homeless. So I had nowhere to receive mail. — LaKesha Womack, in an October 9 campaign video
What the two sides claim is a clean split. Moore's campaign insisted it was simply putting a fact before the voters: "It is a fact that she was served with a felony summons. All voters deserve to know about this and have answers before they cast their vote." Moore himself posted on X on October 28 that his opponent needed to explain the pending felony charges, calling a court date the week after the election "a big deal." Womack called the advertisements deceptive and answered in a statement that accountability "must be grounded in facts, fairness, and due process rather than speculation or sensationalism," and on Friday she declined to discuss the charge with Fox News Digital. Her own account of 2019 is that she did not return the rental car on time while she was homeless — she learned of the case on October 9, two days before she was served, and later said she had retained an attorney.
The common-sense principle underneath the law is why the law reads the way it does. If an unproven charge could keep a duly elected member out of the House, then any prosecutor in any county could overturn an election result by filing a case — the voters' verdict would rank below an allegation that has never been tested in court. So the Constitution leaves the charge to the courtroom and the member's fitness to the House itself, in that order.
What can actually touch her in the House is narrower than removal. Under House rules, members formally charged with a felony punishable by two or more years in prison are expected to step aside from committee assignments and party leadership posts while the charges are pending, Fox News reports. The charge itself is specific and, on the record, small: Mecklenburg County case number 20CR201748-590 accuses her of willfully failing to return a 2019 Toyota Corolla rented from Budget by October 23, 2019, under North Carolina General Statute 14-167 — a misdemeanour-level offence that becomes a Class H felony because the car was valued above $4,000; the summons lists its value as $20,000, the car's value, not rent owed. Class H carries four to 25 months at the minimum range under the state's structured sentencing, up to 39 months at the top. But two Charlotte defence attorneys who do not represent her told the Observer the case may never produce a conviction: Rob Heroy, a former Mecklenburg County prosecutor, called felony charges brought by summons "sort of notoriously throwaway charges that are pursued by rental car agencies," and Tim Emry, a former public defender, said the odds of prosecutors trying her on a felony are "extremely unlikely," with a reduced misdemeanour, deferred prosecution or conditional discharge all possible — in a state where her party's wave also carried Roy Cooper's Senate win. The question November 10 begins to answer is whether a seven-year-old rental-car case follows her to Washington at all, or ends where most lawyers quoted expect it to end — quietly, in a Charlotte courtroom.
Womack gave her own answer to Fox News Digital on Friday: "This historic victory is bigger than me. It is a testament to the power of ordinary people who believe that their voices matter and that leadership should be rooted in service, accountability, and opportunity for all."