The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) on Monday rejected Shiva Ayyadurai’s challenge to the “natural born” citizen clause, after his effort to run for president was blocked.
The “natural born citizen” clause in the Constitution says only someone born a U.S. citizen can become president or vice president. The rule has sparked a number of debates and legal challenges.
Ayyadurai, who was born in India, asked the nation’s High Court to review Ayyadurai v. Democratic State Committee of New Jersey and overturn the decision made by the New Jersey State Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court issued a “certiorari denied,” which means it decided not to review the lower court’s decision.
Ayyadurai, who is known as Dr. Shiva, had enough valid signatures to appear on the 2024 New Jersey ballot, but the New Jersey Democratic Party challenged his inclusion and the lower state courts upheld the challenge.
Michael Dwyer/AP Photo
He appeared on the ballot in other states and received a total of nearly 28,000 votes. He also ran for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts this year but his name did not appear on the ballot.
“I took an oath of allegiance to the United States,” Ayyadurai told KBOI in Boise, Idaho. “The issue is you have 25 million [nonnatural born] citizens who have been brainwashed to think, ‘you’re a citizen but you can’t hold presidential office.’ I’m challenging that.”
Had the U.S. Supreme Court taken the case and ruled in his favor, the natural-born citizen requirement could have been altered to allow any U.S. citizen to run for president.
Newsweek reached out to Ayyadurai for comment on Monday.
Who is Shiva Ayyadurai?
Ayyadurai is a U.S. citizen born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1986, a master’s degree in 1990 and a Ph.D. in 2007 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He has worked as a scientist, inventor, entrepreneur and business owner in fields related to biological systems and computer science. He has authored 10 books and served as a university lecturer at MIT. Additionally, Ayyadurai helped the U.S. Senate deploy its email management infrastructure.
He unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts in 2018 as an independent, receiving nearly 92,000 votes.
Ayyadurai’s presidential campaign launched with the message “One America, One Citizenship,” sparking conversation about the “natural-born” clause, which he argued discriminated against 25 million U.S. citizens by denying them the right to hold the nation’s top office.
Inspired by his message, Americans mobilized across nearly every state, petitioning to get Ayyadurai on the ballots. However, the New Jersey secretary of state upheld the qualification—the “natural born” clause—that his campaign highlighted as discriminatory, blocking his bid for the presidency.
In the past few months, people filed lawsuits and challenges in some states to keep Ayyadurai off the ballot. In other states, election officials removed his name. Meanwhile, several states allowed him on the ballot, either listing his name or allowing him as a write-in candidate.
According to the Supreme Court, Ayyadurai’s name appeared on the presidential election ballots in Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi and Washington.
Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane said officials would have removed Ayyadurai from Idaho’s ballots had they received a complaint in time.
“We learned about it right at the print deadline for all of the ballots,” McGrane told KBOI. “There was a scramble leading up to that and the deadline to get ballots printed.”
In Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin, election officials removed Ayyadurai name from the ballots, enforcing the “natural-born” qualification.
Do you have a story Newsweek should be covering? Do you have any questions about this story? Contact LiveNews@newsweek.com
Amanda Edwards/Getty Images
