Justices turn aside another challenge over Obama’s citizenship
The Supreme Court has again cast aside an appeal that raised doubts about President Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship, a grass-roots legal issue that has gained little legal or political footing, but continues to persist in the courts.
The justices without comment Monday rejected a challenge from Charles Kerchner Jr., a Pennsylvania man who sought a trial in federal court forcing the president to produce documents regarding his birth and citizenship.
Kerchner’s attorney, Mario Apuzzo, had argued in a petition with the Supreme Court that Obama did not fit the definition of a “natural-born citizen” required for the nation’s highest office, as defined by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.
That clause states, “No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
Kerchner, a retired military officer who describes himself on his website as a “genetic genealogy pioneer,” argues the framers of the 1789 document intended a “natural-born” citizen to mean someone born in the U.S. to parents who were both American citizens.