Legal News

High Court Bats Down Petition to Hear Obama Citizenship Case

By Dan Slater

On Friday, Loyal Law Blog readers expressed a flood of interest in a lawsuit over whether President-elect Barack Obama was constitutionally qualified to serve as president. Unfortunately for the petitioner in the case, the Supreme Court expressed seemingly little interest.

As we noted, Justice Thomas picked up the petition to hear a lawsuit filed by New Jersey attorney Leo Donofrio after it was denied by Justice Souter. Justice Thomas referred it to the full court, which decided to distribute the case for the justices’ conference.

In the petition, Donofrio reportedly conceded that Obama was born in Hawaii, as Obama claims. But Donofrio contended Obama was not a “natural born citizen,” as required by Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution, because he was not exclusively a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth. Obama’s father was a citizen of Kenya, formerly British East Africa, so Obama was a British citizen as well.

Today, SCOTUSblog reports that the Court denied Donofrio’s request. SCOTUSblog notes that this marks the second time in recent weeks that the Court turned aside such a challenge. In neither instance did the Court offer a reason for turning down the applications.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 08, 2008 (boomark / email).