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A California attorney who more than a year ago told WND she would go back again and again to the U.S. Supreme Court until she gets an answer on Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president has returned to the court’s calendar.
According to a posting on the U.S. Supreme Court website, Orly Taitz’ latest request for an opinion from the high court has been “referred to the Court.”
Taitz, who has spearheaded several of the prominent legal cases challenging Obama’s eligibility based on claims he does not qualify for the office under the U.S. Constitution, has brought before the court a penalty of $20,000 imposed by a federal judge on her for her actions in one of her cases.
Taitz confirmed to WND she has had donations of about $2,000 to defray the penalty, but she is arguing she should not be subjected to the penalty.
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In two other cases in which penalties were threatened by federal judges on attorneys who brought eligibility challenges both courts backed off when the attorneys pointed out that being subjected to penalties gave them standing to request a hearing on the actual evidence in the case and the discovery of Obama’s birth documentation.
The penalty against Taitz stems from her presentation of the case of Army doctor Capt. Connie Rhodes.
Taitz told WND that in her request before the court she is asking for discovery and arguing the sanctions are not warranted.
On her website, Taitz confirmed her case “will be heard by all 9 justices of the Supreme Court. Whether they will actually read a word, or it will be decided by the … clerks, remains to be seen.”
She previously has brought petitions to the Supreme Court, as have several other lawyers, seeking a ruling on the merits of the arguments that Obama is ineligible.
The court confirmed she had asked Justice Clarence Thomas to refer the case to the court for conference, a meeting of the justices to determine which cases they will hear, and he declined. She then referred it to Justice Samuel Alito, who forwarded it.
WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen.” The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”
Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama’s American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
Other challenges have focused on Obama’s citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.
Several of the cases have involved emergency appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court in which justices have declined even to hear arguments. Among the cases turned down without a hearing at the high court have been petitions by Philip Berg, Cort Wrotnowski, Leo Donofrio and Taitz.
Complicating the situation is Obama’s decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions.
One other prominent case in which a judge threatened sanctions against an attorney involved attorney John Hemenway. He brought a challenge on behalf of retired military officer Gregory S. Hollister.
The Hollister case ultimately was dismissed by Judge James Robertson, who notably ruled during the 2008 election campaign that the federal legal dispute had been “twittered” and, therefore, resolved.
Robertson sarcastically wrote: “The plaintiff says that he is a retired Air Force colonel who continues to owe fealty to his commander in chief (because he might possibly be recalled to duty) and who is tortured by uncertainty as to whether he would have to obey orders from Barack Obama because it has not been proven – to the colonel’s satisfaction – that Mr. Obama is a native-born American citizen, qualified under the Constitution to be president.
“The issue of the president’s citizenship was raised, vetted, blogged, texted, twittered and otherwise massaged by America’s vigilant citizenry during Mr. Obama’s two-year campaign for the presidency, but this plaintiff wants it resolved by a court,” Robertson wrote.
Then the judge suggested sanctions against Hemenway for bringing the case. Hemenway responded that the process then would provide him with a right to a discovery hearing to see documentation regarding the judge’s statements – not supported by any evidence introduced into the case – that Obama was properly “vetted.”
Hemenway warned at the time, “If the court persists in pressing Rule 11 procedures against Hemenway, then Hemenway should be allowed all of the discovery pertinent to the procedures as court precedents have permitted in the past.
“The court has referred to a number of facts outside of the record of this particular case and, therefore, the undersigned is particularly entitled to a hearing to get the truth of those matters into the record. This may require the court to authorize some discovery,” Hemenway said.
The court ultimately backed off its threat of sanctions.
The issue, while it never has been evaluated on its merits in a court of law, has permeated America to the point that even polls by organizations generally supportive of Obama show six out of 10 Americans are not sure of Obama’s birth and, therefore, eligibility.
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