Today Liberty Legal Foundation filed our motion for preliminary injunction against the DNC with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. If the 9th Circuit grants our motion it will issue a court order preventing the DNC from certifying Obama as the Democratic Presidential candidate.
You may remember that the states will not place candidate’s names on the ballot unless and until they receive a document from the political parties identifying their candidate. So, the national political parties send notifications to all 50 states identifying the party’s candidate for president. These notifications come from the DNC and RNC immediately after the parties’ conventions.
Until 2008, each one of these notifications included a statement from the parties that certifies that the candidate is constitutionally eligible to hold the office of President. In 2008, for the first time since this practice began, the DNC sent out 49 notifications that did not include a certification that their candidate, Obama, was constitutionally qualified to hold the office of President. No explanation was offered. Because its laws required the eligibility statement, Hawaii received a notice that included the eligibility statement. The other 49 states, which received notifications without the eligibility statement, all accepted them and placed Obama’s name on their ballots. Perhaps they were relying upon the fact that the DNC’s bylaws state that they are not allowed to support a candidate that is not constitutionally qualified to hold office.
Whether the eligibility certification is express or implied, the political parties and the states understand that these notifications represent the parties’ representation that their candidate is constitutionally qualified to hold the office of President. This is why Liberty Legal Foundation sued the DNC to prevent it from sending notices to the states after its 2012 convention. Our lawsuit points out that such notices are either fraudulent or, at a minimum, represent gross negligence on the part of the DNC.
Our lawsuit makes no claim about where Obama was born. It simply points out that Obama’s father was never a U.S. citizen and that the Supreme Court ruled in 1875 that a natural born citizen must have two parents that are U.S. citizens.
We filed our lawsuit in Arizona because Arizona is part of the 9th Circuit and the 9th Circuit had already ruled that any candidate running for any public office has legal standing to challenge the eligibility of any candidate running for the same office. The Arizona District Court is bound by the 9th Circuit’s ruling on this point. One of our named plaintiffs is Presidential candidate John Dummett. Mr. Dummett’s inclusion as a named party to this lawsuit gives all other CCA plaintiffs standing to challenge Obama’s eligibility.
Rather than address the substantive issue of Obama’s eligibility, Judge Susan Bolton of the Arizona Federal court dismissed our case by claiming that the DNC’s act of sending a notice to the Arizona Secretary of State did not amount to purposefully directing activity toward Arizona. This ruling is absurd, as I discussed in last week’s message. You can read our response to the Arizona court's ruling on pages 6-9 of our motion to the 9th Circuit
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The best news is that Judge Bolton’s action allowed us to appeal to the 9th Circuit. Now that we are before another court we have filed another motion for injunction against the DNC. We are very hopeful that the 9th Circuit will FOLLOW THE LAW AND THE CONSTITUTION.
Please continue to support our efforts by spreading the word about this lawsuit, forwarding this e-mail to everyone you know, and donating what you can to Liberty Legal Foundation.
The U.S. Supreme Court has set a date to review Liberty Legal Foundation’s petition of the Georgia eligibility case. On September 24th the Court will meet to discuss several petitions, including our Georgia eligibility petition. Please see http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/histo...
This is a relatively early date in the Court’s fall cycle for reviewing petitions. We are hoping that this is a sign that the Court has recognized that this issue must be resolved before the November election. Typically the Court announces its decisions regarding acceptance of petitions within a few days after such conferences. So, we should know whether the Court has accepted our petition before the end of September.
The Mr. Obama's attorney waived his right to respond to our petition. This is not unusual. Often the Court will order opposing attorney to file a response after the opposing attorney has filed a waiver. This has not yet happened in our case.
Some have suggested that the Court’s failure to order the President to respond to LLF’s petition is a sign that the Court has already decided that it will deny our petition. Normally it is true that if the Court is interested in a case it will order the opposing side to file a response to the petition. However, because of the importance of this case it could be that the Court has decided to accept the case without needing to review a response from Mr. Obama. It is also possible that the Court has recognized that ordering a response could delay the case beyond the November election.
As we learned last June, it is very difficult to determine what the Supreme Court will do in any given situation. We are glad to know that we will have an answer before the end of next month.
© 2013 Created by Judson Phillips.
