LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Hours after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling rejecting President Trump’s executive order seeking to limit birthright citizenship, immigrant advocates gathered in downtown Las Vegas to discuss what the decision means for families across Nevada.
The Nevada Immigrant Coalition held a news conference Tuesday following the ruling, which the group said preserved birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. The court reaffirmed that children born in the United States are U.S. citizens.
MORE ON FOX5: Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, rejecting Trump’s proposed limits
Las Vegas teacher responds to ruling
Maria Pena, a teacher at Desert Pines High School, an immigrant from Mexico and the mother of a daughter born in the U.S., said she had waited anxiously for months for the decision.
“Just thinking that a decision could be backtracked, right, that her citizenship could come into question even 20 years later, you know, was definitely a chip on my shoulder,” Pena said.
She said the ruling removes one fear from inside her classroom.
“We just want to, you know, teach kids, you know, to strive, you know, that there’s a bright future ahead for them,” Pena said.
Legal experts and coalition weigh in
Michael Kagan, director of the UNLV Immigration Clinic, said the ruling settles the legal question.
“The bottom line from today is that birthright citizenship is what we always thought it was. The Constitution said what it said. If you’re born in the United States, you’re an American,” Kagan said.
In a statement shared by coalition coordinator Noé Orosco, he said the court “recognized a right that already exists” and said children born in the U.S. are citizens “irrespective of who their parents are.”
Bethany Khan, a Culinary Union spokeswoman and member of the coalition’s steering committee, said the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause has protected families like hers. Khan said she was born in the U.S. while her parents were undocumented and said the ruling keeps families together.
“The Trump administration wanted to end birthright citizenship so that future generations of children who were born here, raised here, and belong here, could suddenly find themselves without a country. The U.S. Constitution mandates that birthright citizenship is a right. It keeps millions of families together, and that’s why we organized to protect it,” Khan said.
The ACLU was among the groups that challenged Trump’s executive order in court. Athar Haseebullah, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, said the decision carries broader significance.
“The decision’s an important one, because it at least provides some layer of hope that when we challenge these types of abuses, there are courts that are willing to do the right thing in certain instances,” Haseebullah said.
Dissent and what comes next
The decision was not unanimous — three justices dissented. Speakers at the coalition news conference noted the dissent and said the ruling departed from what the coalition described as long-settled precedent on citizenship for people born in the United States.
Following the ruling, President Trump posted on Truth Social, calling the outcome “too bad for our country” and adding, “we can easily make it up in Congress through legislation.” Trump also wrote, “No long and unwieldy constitutional amendment is necessary.”
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