Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), who was chosen by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden as his running mate on Tuesday, is already being flooded with "birther" conspiracy theories similar to the ones used by President Donald Trump against former President Barack Obama.
FactCheck.org has taken stock of several Facebook posts being widely shared that falsely claim that Harris is not eligible to serve as president under the Constitution.
"If crazy Joe cannot serve his full term, Kamala cannot by constitutional law become President," reads one post that started making the rounds even before Biden announced Harris as his selection. "She is an anchor baby, mother is from India, father is Jamaican, and neither were american citizens at time of her birth."
Of course, thanks to the Constitution's birthright citizenship clause, it doesn't matter if Harris's parents were citizens at the time of her birth. Once she was born in Oakland, we became an American citizen.
"To serve as president, one must be at least 35 years old, have been a resident of the United States for at least 14 years, and be a 'natural born Citizen' (Article II, sec. 1 of the Constitution)," explains Josh Chafetz, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, in an email to FactCheck.
Chafetz also described the Facebook posts questioning Harris's eligibility as "racist nonsense."
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