State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz (D-17th) of Glenview on the Illinois House floor.
State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz (D-17th) of Glenview reacted quickly and positively to the June 30 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) striking down President Donald Trump’s executive order, which attempted to undo birthright citizenship.
The 6-to-3 ruling by the nation’s highest court upheld the 150-year-old legal precedent made under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution upholding the right of all infants born in the United States to be considered citizens.
“This decision is personal for me,” Gong-Gershowitz said. “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.”
“The Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” Trump’s stricken executive order read. “The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’.”
“The Fourteenth Amendment does not draw distinctions based on where your parents came from or what status they held when you were born,” Gong-Gershowitz said. “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.”
She said, “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.”
Before becoming a state representative, Gong-Gershowitz worked as an immigration attorney.
The post ‘This Decision Is Personal For Me’: Gong-Gershowitz Reacts Quickly To SCOTUS Ruling first appeared on Journal & Topics Media Group.
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July 10, 2026 at 10:20AM
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