A judge in New Jersey has ruled that Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz is a “natural-born citizen” under the US constitution and may run in the state’s primary elections in June.<\/p>\n
A group of residents had challenged the Texas senator’s eligibility for the presidency. He was born in Canada to a Cuban father and American mother.<\/p>\n
But Judge Jeff Masin found that Mr Cruz met the constitutional requirements.<\/p>\n
New Jersey’s Lt Governor, Kim Guadagno, is now expected to review the decision.<\/p>\n
Sen Cruz’s main rival for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump, has also questioned his eligibility for the presidency.<\/p>\n
“There’s a big question mark on your head,” the billionaire businessman said at a debate in January. “You can’t do that to the party.”<\/p>\n
‘No absolute certainty’<\/strong><\/p>\n The South Jersey Concerned Citizens Committee and law professor Victor Williams, a presidential write-in candidate, argued in court in on Monday that Sen Cruz’s birth in Canada meant he could not be a “natural-born citizen” as envisaged by those who wrote the US constitution.<\/p>\n They claimed he was a naturalised citizen and that presidents had to be born on US soil.<\/p>\n Sen Cruz’s lawyer argued that he was a natural-born citizen because his mother was American.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Judge Masin dismissed the challenge, while acknowledging that “absolute certainty as to this issue is only available to those who actually sat in Philadelphia and themselves thought on the issue”.<\/p>\n “The more persuasive legal analysis is that such a child, born of a citizen-father, citizen-mother, or both, is indeed a ‘natural born citizen’ within the contemplation of the constitution,” he wrote in a 26-page decision.<\/p>\n Judge Masin added that his decision might be adopted, modified or rejected by Lt Gov Guadagno, New Jersey’s secretary of state, who is authorised to make a final decision on the matter. She must transmit the names of candidates to appear on the primary ballot to county clerks by Thursday.<\/p>\n A similar legal challenge was rejected a court in Pennsylvania, where Sen Cruz will appear on the state’s Republican primary ballot later this month.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A judge in New Jersey has ruled that Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz is a “natural-born citizen” under the US constitution and may run in the state’s primary elections in June. A group of residents had challenged the Texas senator’s eligibility for the presidency. He was born in Canada to a Cuban father and American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}