Laity Challenges Harris’s Eligibility in New Hampshire

by Sharon Rondeau

(Dec. 14, 2023) — On Thursday morning, New York State resident and registered voter Robert C. Laity filed a complaint with the state of New Hampshire against Kamala Harris, who ran as Joe Biden’s vice president and currently occupies the position.

The Election Law Complaint Form Laity completed to file his complaint states that its purpose is to “report a violation of Title III of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, or any New Hampshire election laws.”

After providing the requested personal information, Laity identified Harris as residing at One Observatory Circle, an address belonging to the U.S. Naval Observatory typically occupied by the vice president since Walter Mondale‘s service during the Carter administration.

“The white nineteenth-century house at Number One Observatory Circle in northwestern Washington, D.C. was built in 1893,” the White House website reports. “Originally intended for the superintendent of the USNO, the house was so lovely that in 1923, the chief of naval operations kicked out the superintendent so he could move in himself. Historically, Vice Presidents and their families lived in their own homes, but the cost of securing these private residences grew substantially over the years. Finally, in 1974, Congress agreed to refurbish the house at the Naval Observatory as a home for the Vice President.”

Laity, who in 2020 filed a legal challenge to Harris’s constitutional eligibility to serve as vice president based on her birth in Oakland, CA to non-citizen parents, claimed Harris “is disqualified” from again seeking the office. “Kamala Harris is not an Article II Natural Born Citizen* of the United States and cannot legally be on the Ballot in the State of New Hampshire,” Laity submitted as the “basis” of his complaint.

Following an asterisk he placed below the final line of the complaint, Laity wrote, “A Natural Born Citizen is one born in the United States to Parents who are both US Citizens themselves- Minor v. Happersett, USSCt. (1874) Unanimous,” a reference to the 1874 voting-rights case wherein the U.S. Supreme Court opined:

The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens. The words “all children” are certainly as comprehensive, when used in this connection, as “all persons,” and if females are included in the last, they must be in the first. That they are included in the last is not denied. In fact, the whole argument of the plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/88/162/

Although not stated in the Constitution, the 1804 passage of the 12th Amendment imposed the presidential eligibility requirements contained in Article II, Section 1, clause 5 on vice-presidential candidates.

While many argue that a “natural born Citizen” includes anyone born on U.S. soil without regard to the parents’ citizenship and that the Article II term extends to children born to one U.S.-citizen parent or in foreign countries in a variety of situations, other researchers are convinced the Framers intended only children born in the country to U.S.-citizen parents to be eligible in order to guard against foreign influence entering the highest office of the land.