The National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) has cited the infamous 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, which stated that enslaved people weren’t citizens, to argue that Vice President Kamala Harris is ineligible to run for president according to the Constitution.

The group also challenged the right of Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley to appear on Republican primary ballots.

The Republican group’s platform and policy document noted that “The Constitutional qualifications of Presidential eligibility” states that “No person except a natural born Citizen, shall be eligible, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

The same document included former President Donald Trump’s running mate Ohio Senator JD Vance on a list of preferred candidates for vice president.

The group, which adopted the document during their last national convention held between October 13 and 15 last year, goes on to argue in the document that a natural-born citizen has to be born in the US to parents who are citizens when the child is born, pointing to the thinking of Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

  • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    The group’s response:

    The media’s suggestion that referencing a court case in a 30+ page document equates to endorsing every aspect of the case is inherently dishonest and misleading.

    I would agree if this statement was about almost any other case, but Dred Scott v Sandford? Seriously? This reminds me of the recent argument that a free trial of Disney Plus creates a permanent agreement to binding arbitration even in the case of wrongful death. Sometimes it’s best not to make a certain argument even if (and that’s a big if) that argument is technically correct.

    With that said, this organization is a group of especially right-wing Republicans but it isn’t an official part of the Republican Party. More mainstream Republicans don’t endorse these bizarre legal theories; they prefer to make up false claims which, if they were true, really would disqualify a person from being president.

    • chuckleslord@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Disney+ case, that’s misinformation. Not saying it was a smart move on Disney’s part, terrible PR and it was only to save some money, but the argument wasn’t that. Disney was being roped in due to info on their website, they don’t run the restaurant, and the website would fall under the jurisdiction of the Disney+ TOS. Again, it was a bad decision on their part and I also don’t think that Binding Arbitration agreements should exist in TOS in the first place, but the meme about the headline isn’t true.

      Source: https://youtu.be/hiDr6-Z72XU