U.S. Senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is facing a federal lawsuit seeking to disqualify him from the 2016 general election in November.
Plaintiff Boris Schwartz, Sr. filed the suit against Cruz in the Houston Division of the Southern District of Texas on Jan. 14, asserting the defendant is not a natural born American citizen.
“The defendant Ted Cruz was and is neither a natural born or native born U.S. citizen at the time of his birth as Rafael Edward Cruz in Canada in 1970,” court papers state.
“For legal reasons above and following here, the defendant not now and was not at birth in Canada a natural born citizen of the United States in 1970.”
The 28-page complaint explains that the respondent was born to a father born in Cuba and a mother born in Wilmington, Del.
Cruz purportedly bases his U.S. citizenship on that of his mother, but the suit counters that his claim does not align with the Supreme Court’s 1898 determination that “natural born” status includes “only of and to children of American citizens born overseas while in the employment and/or services as ministers, etc., the employment of the (U.S.) Government.”
The original petition additionally alludes to Cruz’s supposed ineligibility by insinuating his mother had not lived in the U.S. at least five years before his birth.
Cruz, himself an attorney by profession, renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2014.
Schwartz is representing himself.
Houston Division of the Southern District of Texas Case No. 4:16-CV-0106