For Immediate Release
June 30, 2026
More Information:
info@gonggershowitz.com
GLENVIEW, Ill. — State Representative Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, D-Glenview, released the following statement today following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment, rejecting President Trump’s executive order that sought to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to immigrant parents:
“This decision is personal for me. My grandparents came to this country as Chinese immigrants and faced deportation under the Chinese Exclusion Acts. They won the right to stay by challenging the constitutionality of those race-based laws. It was my father’s birthright citizenship that secured his place here, and made everything that came after possible, including my own life and the chance to serve in this legislature. I grew up understanding that citizenship and belonging are not always guaranteed. They have had to be fought for, generation after generation.
“That is exactly why today’s ruling matters so much. The Supreme Court looked to the same case that gave my family’s history its legal shape — Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 decision affirming that a child born on American soil to Chinese immigrant parents was, and is, an American citizen. That precedent held firm today, more than a century later, against an attempt to unwind it.
“The Fourteenth Amendment does not draw distinctions based on where your parents came from or what status they held when you were born. It says, in plain language, that if you are born here, you belong here. That is not a technicality. It is the foundation of what makes this country’s promise real rather than conditional — that citizenship is not a privilege reserved for some, but a birthright extended to all.
“I think often about what it would have meant for my own family if my father’s citizenship had depended on my grandparents’ immigration status rather than on where he was born. Today’s ruling means another generation of children born to immigrant families, regardless of their parents’ immigration status, will not have to wonder whether they belong.
“This is a good day for the Constitution, and a good day for every family in Illinois and across the country who has ever had to fight to be seen as fully American. I will keep working to make sure our laws reflect the equality this country promises — not just to some of us, but to all of us.”
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