To be president of the United States, a person must meet three qualifications set out in Article II of the Constitution: be a natural born citizen, be at least 35 years old, and have resided in the United States for at least 14 years.1Congress.gov. Article 2 Section 1 Clause 5 Two later amendments add disqualifications that can block an otherwise eligible candidate: the 22nd Amendment’s two-term limit and the 14th Amendment’s bar on anyone who engaged in insurrection. The Senate can also disqualify someone from federal office following an impeachment conviction. And Article VI forbids any religious test for the job. Those are the requirements to be president of the United States.
Natural Born Citizen
The Constitution reserves the presidency for a “natural born citizen.”1Congress.gov. Article 2 Section 1 Clause 5 The Supreme Court has never issued a definitive ruling on the exact meaning of the phrase,2Legal Information Institute (LII). Natural Born Citizen but the longstanding consensus covers two groups: people born on U.S. soil, and people born abroad who are U.S. citizens at birth by statute.
Birth in the United States confers citizenship at birth under the 14th Amendment. Federal law also grants citizenship at birth to some children born outside the country, including when both parents are U.S. citizens and at least one previously lived in the United States, or when one parent is a citizen who was physically present in the country for at least five years before the child’s birth.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1401 – Nationals and Citizens of United States at Birth Whether someone born abroad to a single citizen parent qualifies as a “natural born citizen” for presidential purposes remains an open legal question, though no court has blocked such a candidacy.
One edge case involves U.S. territories. People born in incorporated territories receive birthright citizenship, but people born in some unincorporated territories such as American Samoa are classified as non-citizen nationals unless Congress has separately extended citizenship. No case has tested how that classification interacts with presidential eligibility.
At Least 35 Years Old
A candidate must be at least 35 years old.1Congress.gov. Article 2 Section 1 Clause 5 There is a genuine ambiguity about when the age has to be reached. The original draft from the Constitutional Convention would have required a candidate to be 35 “when elected,” but the Committee of Style revised the language to say a person must be “eligible to the Office.” That change opens an argument that a candidate who turns 35 between Election Day and Inauguration Day still qualifies. No court has settled the question and no candidate has forced it, so the prevailing assumption is that the candidate must be 35 by the time they would take office.
Fourteen Years of U.S. Residency
The third Article II requirement is 14 years of residency in the United States.1Congress.gov. Article 2 Section 1 Clause 5 Those years do not need to run consecutively. The prevailing interpretation, traced to Justice Joseph Story, treats residency as a permanent home base in the United States rather than an unbroken physical presence.4Congress.gov. ArtII.S1.C5.1 Qualifications for the Presidency Under that reading, someone who spent years stationed abroad in the military, at a U.S. embassy, or in another government role does not lose credit toward the 14 years, so long as the United States remained their permanent home.
The Two-Term Limit
The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, prevents anyone from being elected president more than twice.5Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Twenty-Second Amendment A person who takes over the presidency partway through someone else’s term faces a tighter rule: if they serve more than two years of the inherited term, it counts as a full term, leaving them eligible for only one more election. The practical ceiling is roughly ten years for a vice president who steps in early and then wins two elections outright.
A less settled question is whether a former two-term president could serve as vice president. The 12th Amendment says that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President.”6Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Twelfth Amendment The 22nd Amendment only bars a two-term president from being “elected” president again. Some scholars read the two provisions together to allow a former two-term president to be elected or appointed vice president and then succeed to the presidency, since the 22nd Amendment restricts election rather than service.7Library of Congress. Overview of Twenty-Second Amendment, Presidential Term Limits Others read the 12th Amendment’s “ineligible” more broadly. No court has resolved it.
Disqualification for Insurrection
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars anyone from holding federal or state office who previously swore an oath as a government official to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” The provision reaches the presidency along with seats in Congress, state legislatures, and the military. Congress can lift the disqualification for a specific person by a two-thirds vote of both chambers,8Cornell Law School. Amendment XIV – Disqualification Clause and has done so on a large scale in the past for former Confederates.9Congress.gov. Overview of the Insurrection Clause (Disqualification Clause)
Who Decides
In 2024, the Supreme Court addressed enforcement of Section 3 in Trump v. Anderson, reversing a Colorado Supreme Court decision that had removed a candidate from that state’s ballot. The Court held that enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates is Congress’s responsibility, not the states’, and that Congress must legislate the procedures for determining who is disqualified.10Wikisource. Trump v. Anderson – Opinion of the Court Without that federal legislation, states cannot unilaterally remove a federal candidate from the ballot on insurrection grounds.
Disqualification After Impeachment
The Constitution gives the Senate a separate tool for blocking someone from the presidency. Article I, Section 3 provides that the Senate’s judgment in impeachment cases can include both removal from office and “disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.”11Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute (LII). Overview of Impeachment Judgments Criminal prosecution can still follow separately.
The Senate treats disqualification as a step apart from the conviction vote. Conviction requires a two-thirds supermajority, but Senate practice has been to impose future disqualification by a simple majority vote taken after conviction.12Congress.gov. ArtI.S3.C7.2 Doctrine on Impeachment Judgments The harder hurdle is getting 67 senators to convict; after that, a bare majority can permanently bar someone from the presidency or any other federal office.
No Religious Test
Article VI flatly prohibits any religious qualification for federal office: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”13Legal Information Institute (LII). Interpretation of the Religious Test Clause Voters remain free to weigh a candidate’s faith, but no law or regulation can require a president to belong to any religion or hold any religious belief.