Independent presidential candidate Shiva Ayyadurai has been deemed ineligible to appear on New Jersey ballots, with Administrative Law Judge William Cooper determining that his being born in India to non-American parents contravenes the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that the president be a “natural-born citizen.”
“[Ayyadurai] was not born in the United States, was not born to a United States citizen, and he freely admits that he immigrated to the United States and went through a naturalization process in 1983,” Cooper wrote in his decision. “Given the general consensus on the definition of a natural born citizen, respondent does not fall underneath the category, and thus cannot qualify for the office of president.”
Cooper’s opinion is subject to review by Secretary of State Tahesha Way, who ultimately has final say over who does and doesn’t make it onto New Jersey’s ballots.
Ayyadurai, a graduate of Livingston High School, was born in India in 1963 and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of seven. He became a naturalized citizen when he was 20, which made him eligible for most political offices in the country; he ran for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts in 2018 as an independent and in 2020 as a Republican, losing both times.
But as argued by election attorney Raj Parikh, representing the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, the fact that Ayyadurai was not born in the United States makes president (or vice president) an office he is not constitutionally allowed to hold.
“The United States Constitution requires, in order for someone to be qualified to run for the office of President of the United States, a variety of things, including that the individual either be a citizen at the time of the signing of the Constitution – which, clearly, nobody alive at the moment is – or, alternatively, that the candidate be a natural-born citizen,” Parikh said at yesterday’s hearing on the challenge.
Ayyadurai put down a smattering of different arguments against Parikh’s case, including that the Supreme Court’s Trump v. Anderson ruling last year supposedly prevents states from disqualifying any federal candidates (in a case that revolved around an entirely different provision of the Constitution); that New Jersey has allowed ineligible presidential candidates on the ballot before in the absence of a challenge; and that the entire issue is one that needs to be decided by voters themselves.
“The people of New Jersey want me, Dr. Shiva, on the ballot,” Ayyadurai said. “This is a political process – the will of the people. As such, this comes under the political question doctrine. It’s a non-justiciable issue… Non-justiciable means that even a court does not have the power to exercise its judicial power. The political process must prevail.”
Another core component of Ayyadurai’s argument came from a 2011 Federal Election Commission ruling that a Guyanese-born man could file paperwork to run for president and raise money for his effort. But that was a case concerning campaign finance laws, not ballot access, and several federal courts later explicitly affirmed that the Constitution’s natural-born citizen requirement remains in place.
Ayyadurai, who summoned more than 120 of his supporters to attend the virtual hearing, also implied that Cooper may have been biased against him.
“It’s come to my attention that the Democrat governor, Phil Murphy, nominated you as one of three judges to the [Office of Administrative Law], and Mr. Parikh, my opposing counsel, who’s representing the New Jersey Democratic Party, is a very close professional ally of the Democratic governor Murphy – the same person who nominated you for this post,” Ayyadurai said.
Ayyadurai, a vaccine skeptic who has promoted a number of conspiracy theories related to Covid and who has referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “Satan,” was one of nine independent or minor-party candidates to file for president in New Jersey this year; rather than allying with a pre-existing party, he filed under the “Dr. Shiva” ballot slogan.
Two other candidates, independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and American Solidarity Party nominee Peter Sonski, also faced challenges to their candidacies – Kennedy for previously running as a Democrat (potentially in violation of the state’s Sore Loser Law), Sonski for having issues with his petition signatures. Sonski has been removed from the ballot, while the Kennedy case is still ongoing.