page_title: Andy Martin
section_title: Lawsuit against the state of Hawaii
hierarchical_section_title: Andy Martin / Role in rumors about Obama / Lawsuit against the state of Hawaii
caption_attribution_description: A scanned image of United States President Barack Obama's Certification of Live Birth, as released by his campaign to Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos website. The Barack Obama campaign posted the same Certification of Live Birth image on its own website, labeling it as a "Birth Certificate" to counter rumors against the candidate. This larger version, retreived from the Daily Kos website provides more detail. The Daily Kos is reliable enough to post a copy of a document which looks identical to the one on the Barack Obama campaign website at http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/birthcert
context_page_description: Anthony Robert Martin-Trigona, usually known as Andy Martin, is an American perennial candidate who has never been elected to office, running as both a Democrat and a Republican. He has pursued numerous political litigations.
  The Nation, The Washington Post, and The New York Times identified Martin as the primary source of false rumors that then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was secretly a Muslim during the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. In a later interview with CNN, Martin explicitly abandoned this view and now asserts Obama's real father is not Barack Obama, Sr., but African American journalist Frank Marshall Davis.
  In October 17, 2008, Martin filed a lawsuit against the state of Hawaii calling for the public release of Barack Obama's birth certificate and other vital records. To counter conspiracy theories that Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States, the Obama campaign previously posted an image of his short-form birth certificate online. Martin's lawsuit sought a copy of Sen. Obama's long-form birth certificate. On November 19, the Hawaii Supreme Court dismissed Martin's lawsuit.
context_section_description: On October 17, 2008, Martin filed a lawsuit in a state circuit court of Hawaii against Governor Linda Lingle and state health department director Dr. Chiyome Fukino, seeking to verify the state's official birth certificate for Obama. Months before this suit, the Obama campaign posted an image of his short-form birth certificate online. Martin's lawsuit sought to order the state to release a copy of Obama's long-form birth certificate.
  The short-form birth certificate that the Obama campaign posted online stated that his date of birth as August 4, 1961, his place of birth as Honolulu, Hawaii, and other details. Martin was quoted as saying, "I want to see a certified copy issued by the state of Hawai'i, not one issued by the state of Obama."
  Hawaii State Department and Health spokeswoman Janice Okubo stated that only people with a "tangible relationship" to a person can access a copy of the person's birth certificate, adding that a 1949 law "was enacted primarily to protect your private information, especially in these days where there's ID theft." Attorney General Mark Bennett said that he had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on it, but said that according to Hawaii Revised Statutes it is unlawful to release vital records to anyone except individuals listed in state records as having close relations with Obama (that is, a spouse, parents, descendants, or someone with a common ancestor). In regard to a designee representing Obama, Okubo says "If someone from Obama's campaign gave us permission in person and presented some kind of verification that he or she was Obama's designee, we could release the vital record."
  On October 22, 2008, in a Honolulu court proceeding overseen by the Honorable Bert I. Ayabe of the First Circuit of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, the court denied Martin's petition for a writ of mandamus to order the release of Obama's vital records. A further hearing was held on November 18. On November 19, the court denied Martin's "emergency motion" and dismissed Martin's lawsuit, based on Martin's lack of legal standing to obtain another person's birth document.
  On April 27, 2011, White House staffers gave reporters a copy of the official long-form certificate, and posted a PDF image of the certificate on the White House website. The certificate reconfirmed the information on the official short-form certificate released in 2008, and provided additional details such as the name of the hospital where Obama was born.
caption: President Barack Obama's short-form birth certificate
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