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22 Democratic attorneys general sue over Trump's birthright citizenship order

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin, who spearheaded one of the legal initiatives, called Trump's decision extraordinary and extreme.

Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House.Jim Watson / AFP.

A coalition of at least 22 Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship. The legal action was initiated in Massachusetts and was joined by the cities of San Francisco and Washington, DC.

One of the first executive orders signed by President Trump hours after his inauguration was a pause on birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, defying the traditional interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin, who spearheaded the legal initiative along with the attorneys general of California and Massachusetts, called Trump's decision extraordinary and extreme.

"Presidents are powerful, but he is not a king. He cannot rewrite the Constitution with a stroke of the pen," Platkin said in a statement picked up by The New York Times.

In addition to New Jersey, the states joining the lawsuit are: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

"We will not allow him to do so

Meanwhile, Arizona's attorney general, Kris Mayes, announced another lawsuit against the president over the same issue. Oregon, Washington and Illinois are also listed as plaintiffs.

"While President Trump may want to take this nation back to a time before all American citizens were treated equally under the law — we will not allow him to do so," said U.S. Attorney Mayes.

In addition to claiming that the president cannot amend the Constitution, the four states argue that the decision directly affects them. Because of the loss of federal assistance programs, they claim, "Plaintiff States will be forced to bear significantly increased costs."

At a "conservative" estimate, they calculate that each month more than 1,100 babies born in their states - 12,000 in the United States - will be left without citizenship or immigration status at the stroke of a pen. They will be, they claim, without documents and even without a homeland.

The constitutional argument

Anticipating arguments that the rule violated the Fourteenth Amendment, the Trump administration argued in its communication of the order that the amendment had been misinterpreted. It claimed that the amendment did not universally grant citizenship to everyone born on U.S. soil, but only to those who were also "subject" to U.S. "jurisdiction."

Those born to parents who are in the country illegally or with a temporary permit, they claim, are not subject to that jurisdiction.

In that regard, NBC claimed that "Trump's proposal does not go into effect for a month, giving courts ample time to block it before then.”

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