SCOTUS Shattering: 8 Prominent Groups Target Obama's Natural Born Citizenship; Bills Signed

Seeking restitution of $90 in injuries and settling the question of Obama’s citizenship bona fides is what Petitioner Christopher John Rudy is asking the Supreme Court in Rudy v Lee. The William J. Olson law firm issued the the following press release today detailing their recent filing of a friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, on behalf of Mr. Rudy -

Amicus Brief in U.S. Supreme Court 

On August 13, 2014, our firm filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, supporting a patent attorney’s claim that a law mandating an increase in patent application fees was invalid because it was signed into law by President Obama who does not meet the constitutional requirement to be a “natural born citizen.” The lower courts in the case ruled that the question of President Obama’s citizenship is a “political question” and thus an issue for Congress — not the courts — to decide. 

Until now, the question of President Obama’s qualifications as a “natural born citizen” has been dodged by the judiciary because those challenging his eligibility had not suffered any personal injury compensable by a court — and thus lacked “legal” standing. There is no such barrier in this case because the patent attorney suffered an out-of-pocket loss of $90.00 because of the new law signed by President Obama. 

Also, until now, no one has questioned the validity of a law signed by the President. Rather, previous cases have sought the removal of President Obama from the presidential ballot or from office altogether. In this case, however, the complaining patent attorney is not seeking President Obama’s removal from office, but simply a refund of his $90.00 and a declaration that, unless he is a “natural born citizen,” President Obama does not have the constitutional authority to sign a bill into law. Yet, the courts are attempting to avoid declaring what the law is based on the judge-made expedient of labeling the issue a “political question.” 

In addition to possessing the standing that prior challengers lacked, Mr. Rudy’s case comes at an opportune time — just two months after the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held in National Labor Relations Board v. Canning that an Order of the NLRB was invalid because three members of the board were constitutionally ineligible to serve. 

Our amicus brief in Rudy argued that if the U.S. Supreme Court can decide whether members of the NLRB meet the constitutional requirements of their office, it can also decide whether the President of the United States meets the constitutional requirements of his office. 

Further, as our brief demonstrated, the requirement that a President be a “natural born citizen” is a fixed legal principle prescribed by the Constitution, with the purpose to insulate the office from foreign influences that would compromise the President’s sworn oath to “defend, preserve, and protect” the Constitution of the United States. 

Many object to any challenge to the eligibility of a president, or presidential aspirant, but if the law is to apply equally to every person, Presidents cannot be deemed to be above the law based on vague tests such as whether the case presents “political question.” Indeed, demonstrating that the term “natural born citizen” is a constitutional requirement that has continuing political significance which needs resolution are questions not just about President Obama, but also about Republicans Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz, and others. 

Our brief was filed on behalf of U.S. Justice Foundation, Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, Abraham Lincoln Foundation, U.S. Border Control, U.S. Border Control Foundation, Institute on the Constitution, Policy Analysis Center, and Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund.

The Supreme Court is currently in recess returning in September. There is no guarantee SCOTUS will hear this case, so don’t get your hopes up, however, after reading the exceptionally strong arguments put forth in the Olson friend-of-the-court brief (see below), the Court would be hard pressed to simply ignore Rudy’s complaint. After all, they only recently ruled appointments made by Obama to the NRLB to be unconstitutional, he has standing and all he wants is a simple “refund of his $90.00 and a declaration that, unless he is a “natural born citizen,” President Obama does not have the constitutional authority to sign a bill into law.”

From the beginning, when thousands upon thousands of voters were questioning and challenging Mr. Obama’s citizenship status, this very question was asked ad naseum “if he’s not a natural born citizen then how can the legislation he signs be legal?” But no one, then nor now, who has been given the trust to serve the People, has ever provided an unequivocal answer. Instead all that is heard is silence with the only exception being the paid for crazy choir of birther obots.

It is unfathomable that in six years not one governor, not one state attorney general, not one secretary of state, not one representative, not one senator, not one judge has once settled the most basic of questions for the most powerful position in the world – what is the definitive definition of a ‘natural born citizen?’  Sure the People know, we’ve always known, but ask any in authority and they turn into quivering nannies? No offense to nannies intended.

Just my opinion, but if SCOTUS refuses this case, especially after reading the Olson brief, then the People indeed have their answer, that is Mr. Obama’s citizenship status is, unequivocally, something other than natural born.

Helen Tansey is the Founder and Editor of the alternative news website T-Room.us.

U.S. Justice Foundation, Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, U.S. Border Control Foundation, Policy Analysis Center, and Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund, are nonprofit educational organizations, exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (“IRC”). Abraham Lincoln Foundation for Public Policy Research and U.S. Border Control are nonprofit social welfare organizations exempt from federal income tax under IRC section 501(c)(4). Institute on the Constitution is an educational organization.

These organizations were established, inter alia, for educational purposes related to participation in the public policy process, including programs to conduct research and to inform and educate the public on important issues of national concern, the proper construction of state and federal constitutions and statutes, questions related to human and civil rights secured by law, and related issues. Each organization has filed numerous amicus curiae briefs in this Court and other federal courts.

On January 25 and April 27, 2012, Christopher John Rudy, a registered patent attorney, paid to the Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) fee increases totaling $90, as required by the America Invents Act(“AIA”), purportedly enacted into law in September 2011 by Congress and the President in accordance with Article I, Section 7, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution. See Petition for a Writ of Certiorari (“Pet.”) at 4. Mr. Rudy then requested and petitioned the PTO for a refund of the fee increases on the ground that the AIA was invalid, having been signed into law by Barack Obama, a person who, Mr. Rudy claimed, was not a “natural born Citizen,” and thus, was ineligible to hold the office of President of the United States. Id. PTO denied Mr. Rudy’s request, advising Mr. Rudy that it “had no authority to look into Mr. Obama’s citizenship status.” Id. at 5.

Mr. Rudy filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. In response to PTO’s motion to dismiss on the ground that whether President Obama was a “natural born Citizen” was a “political question,” the district court agreed, dismissing Mr. Rudy’s complaint for lack of jurisdiction. See Pet. at App. 4 -11. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit summarily affirmed. Id. at App. 1-2.

During the same time period that Mr. Rudy was being rebuffed by the courts, Noel Canning, a Pepsi Cola distributor, found the courts open to address the merits of his claim against the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”). Like Mr. Rudy’s complaint, Mr. Canning complained that the action taken against him by the NLRB was invalid because a majority of the Board was ineligible to serve. Further, like Mr. Rudy’s claim that President Obama did not meet the constitutionally required natural born citizenship under Article II, Section 1, Mr. Canning asserted that three members of the Board neither met the constitutionally required advice and consent of the Senate, nor were properly appointed under Article II, Section 2, Clause 3.

Unlike the courts below, which quickly dispatched Mr. Rudy’s claim as nonjusticiable, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and this Court unhesitatingly addressed the merits of Mr. Canning’s claim, without even a tip of the hat to the political question doctrine.

Explaining this Court’s readiness to reach the merits in Canning, Justice Breyer prefaced the majority’s decision with a quotation from Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Paper No. 76:

The Federalist Papers make clear that the Founders intended th[e] method of appointment, requiring Senate approval, to be the norm … because … the need to secure Senate approval provides “an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to preventing the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity.” [Canning, 134 S.Ct. at 2558-59.]

“[C]oncurring in the judgment,” Justice Scalia observed that “when questions involving the Constitution’s government-structuring provisions are presented in a justiciable case, it is the solemn responsibility of the Judicial Branch ‘to say what the law is.’” Id. at 2593 (Scalia, J., concurring) (citations omitted). Indeed, as Justice Scalia emphasized, “policing the ‘enduring structure’ of constitutional government when the political branches fail to do so is ‘one of the most vital functions of this Court.’” Id. (citations omitted).

Like the executive appointments clause of Article II, Section 2, the presidential eligibility provision of Article II, Section 1 — especially its “natural born Citizen” requirement — is part of the “enduring structure” of the federal government established by the U.S. Constitution. As Joseph Story observed in his acclaimed Commentaries on the Constitution:

It is indispensable … that the president should be a natural born citizen of the United States…. It cuts off all chances for ambitious foreigners, who might otherwise be intriguing for the office; and interposes a barrier against those corrupt interferences of foreign governments in executive elections, which have inflicted the most serious evils upon the elective monarchies of Europe…. [J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, § 1473 (1833), reprinted in 3 The Founders’ Constitution, Item 2, p. 564 (P. Kurland & R. Lerner, eds., Univ. of Chi. Press: 1987) (hereinafter “Founders”).3 ]

More vociferously, St. George Tucker declared “[t]hat [the] provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen … is a happy means of security against foreign influence, which … is to be dreaded more than the plague.” St. George Tucker, View of the Constitution of the United States at 260 (Liberty Fund: 1999).

Strikingly, the Article II limit on presidential eligibility parallels the Article II limit on the presidential appointment power. Both are designed as checks against corrupting influences in the executive branch: (i) the limit on the presidential appointment power guarding against such influences arising from within the country, and (ii) the limit on presidential eligibility guarding against improper influences arising from outside the country.

In Canning, this Court unanimously decided that there are judicially enforceable standards limiting the President’s recess appointment power. In the instant case, the question before the Court is whether there are judicially enforceable limits governing the exercise of the powers of the presidency by a person who allegedly does not meet the eligibility requirement that he be a “natural born Citizen,” or whether that question is nonjusticiable, enforceable only at the discretion of the Congress.

The question in this case is whether a complaint for money damages and a declaratory judgment is subject to a motion to dismiss because the claims are based upon a nonjusticiable political question — whether President Barack Obama is a natural born citizen and, thus, eligible to exercise the power vested in the President to sign a bill into law.

Purporting to apply this Court’s political question criteria under Baker v. Carr, the courts below erroneously assumed that Article II, and the Twelfth, Twentieth, and Twenty-Fifth Amendments (i) committed the determination of presidential eligibility to Congress, (ii) that the citizenship particularly was not amenable to judicial resolution, and (iii) any order for the payment of damages or for declaratory relief would be tantamount to a removal of President Obama from office.

First, Article II, even as modified by the Twelfth, Twentieth and Twenty-Fifth Amendments, prescribes a narrow role for Congress in the selection of the President, vesting primary control of the presidential election process in the legislatures of the several state and in the Electoral College. None of these provisions commit the question of eligibility to the discretion of Congress.

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