Court Rejects Obama Ineligibility Appeal

The Supreme Court has turned down an emergency appeal from a man who says President-elect Barack Obama is ineligible to be U.S. president because he was a British subject at birth.

The court did not comment on its order Monday rejecting the call by Leo Donofrio to intervene in the presidential election.

Donofrio says that since Obama had dual nationality at birth - his mother was American and his Kenyan father at the time was a British subject - he cannot possibly be a "natural born citizen," one of the requirements the U.S. Constitution lists for eligibility to be president.

"This is the least surprising move by the Supreme Court in years," said CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen. "No serious legal scholar believed that the Justices would take the case and overturn the election."

Donofrio also contends that two other candidates, Republican John McCain and Socialist Workers candidate Roger Calero, also are not natural-born citizens and thus ineligible to be president.

At least one other appeal over Obama's citizenship remains at the court. Philip J. Berg argues that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as Obama says and the Hawaii secretary of state has confirmed.

Berg says Obama also may be a citizen of Indonesia, where he lived as a boy. Federal courts in Pennsylvania have dismissed Berg's lawsuit. Federal courts in Ohio and Washington state have rejected similar lawsuits.

Allegations raised on the Internet say the birth certificate, showing that Obama was born in Hawaii on Aug. 4, 1961, is a fake.

But state officials in Hawaii say they checked health department records and have determined there is no doubt Obama was born in Hawaii.

The nonpartisan Web site Factcheck.org examined the original document and said it does have a raised seal and the usual evidence of a genuine document.

In addition, Factcheck.org reproduced an announcement of Obama's birth, including his parents' address in Honolulu, that was published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Aug. 13, 1961.