Despite “Mootness” Ruling, Presidential Eligibility Question Remains, Plaintiff Says

[Elderberry]

The Post & Email

State of New York

Court of Appeals

Despite “Mootness” Ruling, Presidential Eligibility Question Remains, Plaintiff Says

 In a Substack post on Tuesday, the plaintiff in a case challenging Kamala Harris’s constitutional eligibility to serve as president reported the issuance of an opinion from the New York Court of Appeals pending since November.

Last August, former attorney, New York State registered voter and plaintiff Montgomery Blair Sibley sued Co-Executive Director of the New York Board of Elections and New York’s Chief Election Official Kristen Zebrowski Stavisky in her official capacity for preemptively placing Harris’s name on the 2024 presidential ballot.

For nearly four years prior to the November 5 election, Harris served as Joe Biden’s vice president, a position which, following the passage of the 12th Amendment in 1804, requires the same eligibility criteria as the presidency.

Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution reads:

    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.

Over more than a century, debate has taken place over the precise meaning of “natural born Citizen,” a term of art the Founders left undefined.

“The Chief Election Official will breach her duty and deprive Sibley of his Article II, §1 right to vote for a President who is a ‘natural born Citizen’ if she permits Kamala Iyer Harris to appear on the New York November 5, 2024, ballot for President of the United States,” Sibley wrote in his complaint. “In that event, Sibley will have no material choice for President as Kamala Iyer Harris is ineligible for the office of the President. Sibley would then be reduced to no meaningful choice between major party candidates. In that case, a fraud will have been perpetrated upon both Sibley and the electorate.”

More: https://www.thepostemail.com/2025/04/16/despite-mootness-ruling-presidential-eligibility-question-remains-plaintiff-says/