The Dred Scott decision, which ruled that enslaved people were not U.S. citizens, is often cited as the worst Supreme Court decision ever, the National Archives states on its website. Also, it was “overturned by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, which abolished slavery and declared all persons born in the United States to be citizens of the United States.”

But the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA), an organization with 26 chapters in the U.S. and which once included Ronald Reagan in its membership, is using that decision to argue that born-in-the-USA Kamala Harris is not a natural-born citizen. The resolution is undated. But we know it was drawn up during the 2024 presidential campaign because it also cites Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy as disqualified.

Funny how all the disqualified ones are people of color, along with the original birther target, Barack Obama.

AlterNet has more on the resolution, which was posted to Bluesky by attorney Andrew Fleischman:

The NFRA argued that the phrase "natural born citizen" is defined as "a person born on American soil of parents who are both citizens of the United States at the time of the child's birth."

However, as numerous Bluesky users observed, applying the NFRA's interpretation of that clause would have made multiple U.S. presidents ineligible to hold office, including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, among others. Dallas-based attorney Santiago Reich pointed out that because those presidents' parents were born on land classified as British colonies at the time, they would not meet the standard the NFRA set to define natural-born citizenship.

One of the other SCOTUS decisions the NFRA cited in its resolution was the 1939 Perkins v. Elg case, which states: "A child born here of alien parentage becomes a citizen of the United States." Reich called the NFRA "pretty f—ing bold" to cite a decision that undermines their core argument.

You can read the full Bluesky thread here.

Harris has been vice president of the U.S. and next in line to the presidency since January, 2021. If the NFRA is so certain she doesn’t qualify to be president, why did its constitutional concerns only come to the forefront now?

I’ll go out on a limb and guess that it’s all about helping Donald Trump slither his way back into the White House. The group that claims to believe in “the guiding force of moral law as expressed by the Judeo-Christian ethic and contained in the Holy Scriptures of these historic faiths,” also states at the top of its home page that its president is “thrilled to reaffirm our steadfast support for President Donald Trump.”

Yep, that’s the same former president who tried to overturn a democratic election, fomented an insurrection, stole classified documents, was convicted of 34 felonies related to his efforts to hide an extramarital affair with a porn star, was adjudged to have committed fraud to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, and boasted about committing sexual assault on video.

In other words, the NFRA doesn’t really care about the Constitution or Judeo-Christian ethics or morals. It cares about power.