Another lawsuit has been filed asking for the courts to weigh in on whether Ted Cruz qualifies as a “natural born” citizen and thus is eligible under the Constitution to be president.
Walter L. Wagner of Salt Lake City, Utah, filed a federal challenge last week to Cruz’s eligibility and is asking the U.S. District Court of Utah for a “declaratory judgement” that the senator is not eligible to be president, Buzzfeed reported.
Wagner told Buzzfeed he is a trained lawyer but has been out of practice for 30 years. He also was behind a 2008 federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy and European Center for Nuclear Energy Research (CERN) claiming that the government agencies were covering up the threat that the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator could create a black hole that would consume the planet.
Wagner’s challenge cites the Washington Post op-ed written by Widener University’s Delaware Law School professor Mary Brigid McManamo. She argued that Cruz — who was born in Canada to an American mother — does not meet the standards of what was considered “natural born” under early English common law. Wagner’s lawsuit claims the 2008 congressional resolution declaring Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — who was then running for president — a natural born citizen does not apply to Cruz, because the Panama Canal zone where McCain was born to two American parents counted as “U.S. soil” at the time of this birth.
Many legal scholars have pointed out that challenging Cruz on the birth issue is tricky in part because it is unclear who has “standing” and courts might consider the issue a “political question” best solved through the political process.
Read the full complaint below:
