AP Fact Check: Harris eligible to serve as VP, president

False claims that Kamala Harris is not legally eligible to serve as U.S. vice president or president have been circulating in social media posts since 2019, when she first launched her Democratic primary campaign.

On Thursday, after Harris was selected by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to serve as his running mate, the claims began to once again circulate on social media.

A look at the claim:

The claim is that Harris is ineligible to serve as vice president or president because her mother is from India and her father is from Jamaica.

The facts are that’s false. Harris was born Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland, according to a copy of her birth certificate, obtained by The Associated Press.

Her mother, a cancer researcher from India, and her father, an economist from Jamaica, met as graduate students at the University of California Berkeley.

Since she was born on U.S. soil, she is considered a natural born U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment, and she is eligible to serve as either the vice president or president, Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, told The Associated Press Thursday, Aug. 13.

“Full stop, end of story, period, exclamation point,” Levinson said.

There is “no serious dispute” in the legal community around the idea that someone born in the U.S. can serve as president, Juliet Sorensen, a law professor at Northwestern University, said.

“The VP has the same eligibility requirements as the president,” Sorensen said. “Kamala Harris, she has to be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old and a resident in the United States for at least 14 years. She is. That’s really the end of the inquiry.”

The false claims first started circulating on social media in 2019, during Harris’ presidential campaign, and they were revived again recently, days ahead of her selection as Biden’s running mate. Facebook posts falsely said she would not be eligible to take over for Biden because her parents were both immigrants.

“I can’t believe people are making this idiotic comment,” Laurence Tribe, a Harvard University professor of constitutional law, told The Associated Press at the time. “She is a natural-born citizen, and there is no question about her eligibility to run.”

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