Kamala Harris is eligible to be president, despite claim on Facebook

On Aug. 11, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, announced his pick for the office of vice president he once held: Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.

“I have the great honor to announce that I’ve picked @KamalaHarris — a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants — as my running mate,” he tweeted.

About a week prior, some social media posts prematurely announced that Biden had tapped Harris for vice president — and declared that she was ineligible to take over the presidency.

"If crazy Joe cannot serve his full term, Kamala cannot by constitutional law become president," the post says. "She is an anchor baby, mother is from India, father is Jamaican, and neither were American citizens at time of her birth."

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed.  

Harris’ father and mother were born in Jamaica and India, respectively. But Harris herself is a natural-born citizen and eligible to be president of the United States. 

Back when Harris was still a Democratic presidential candidate, we fact-checked a similar claim: that she was ineligible to run for president. That’s wrong. 

"If you are born in the U.S., you are automatically a natural-born U.S. citizen under the constitution," Harvard Law professor Einer Elhuage told PolitiFact in 2019.

Harris was born in Oakland, Calif., a spokesperson for her campaign told us that year, "which is, was, and presumably will be, in the United States of America."

Harris is 55 years old, two decades older than the minimum age to become president.