Attorneys general from 22 states, including Hawaii, sued President Donald Trump in two federal district courts today to block an executive order that refuses to recognize as citizens the U.S.-born children of immigrants in the country illegally, the opening salvo in what promises to be a long legal battle over the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Eighteen states and two cities, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., challenged the order in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, arguing that birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment is “automatic” and that neither the president nor Congress has the constitutional authority to revise it. Four other states filed a second lawsuit in the Western District of Washington.

Trump’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship was “extraordinary and extreme,” said New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, who led one of the legal efforts along with the attorneys general from California and Massachusetts.

“Presidents are powerful,” he said, “but he is not a king. He cannot rewrite the Constitution with a stroke of the pen.”

Nick Brown, the attorney general in Washington, said Trump’s order would deny citizenship to 150,000 newborn children each year.

“It would render them undocumented at birth. It could even render them citizens to no country at all,” said Brown, whose state was joined by Oregon, Arizona and Illinois.

(Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez said in a news release today that her office was joining the legal effort in Massachusetts, seeking to invalidate the executive order. “The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states in its first words that all persons born in the United States are citizens of this nation. These words could not be clearer,” Lopez said, adding the “the words of the U.S. Constitution are inviolable.” Special Assistant to the Attorney General Dave Day and Solicitor General Kaliko’onalani Fernandes are leading Hawaii’s efforts in the case.)

On Monday, in the opening hours of his second term as president, Trump signed an order declaring that future children born to immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally would no longer be treated as citizens. The order would extend to the children of some mothers in the country legally but temporarily, such as foreign students or tourists.

Trump’s executive order asserts that the children of such noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and thus aren’t covered by the 14th Amendment’s long-standing constitutional guarantee.

The order flew in the face of more than 100 years of legal precedent, when the courts and the executive branch interpreted the 14th Amendment as guaranteeing citizenship to every baby born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ legal status. The courts recognize only a few exceptions — such as the children of accredited diplomats, and children born in U.S. territory that is under the control of an occupying army.

“It’s so outlandish that it’s almost assured to be struck down,” predicted Akhil Reed Amar, a professor at Yale Law School, who expressed shock at the order’s breadth. Even former Vice President Kamala Harris, whose mother was a foreign student when she was born, might be impacted. “The person who drafted this order was not doing Donald Trump any favors.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Trump’s order would mean that more than 20,000 newborn children would lose their citizenship each year in his state alone. Trump is “trying to keep a promise that he made during the campaign,” Bonta said. “We’re trying to keep a promise to uphold the law.”

A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There are signs the judiciary could be divided on the issue. Judge James C. Ho, whom Trump nominated to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has been more sympathetic to some of Trump’s arguments, likening immigrants entering the U.S. illegally to an invading army. That comparison has also been made by lawyers for the state of Texas and another declaration by Trump that illegal crossings at the southern border amount to an “ongoing invasion.”

Still, that appeals court does not hear cases originating in Massachusetts, and other courts are unlikely to even consider the Trump administration’s arguments about constitutional interpretation without a new law from Congress, said Gerard Magliocca, a professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He cited recent cases where the Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch can’t single-handedly address the biggest political controversies, known as “major questions.”

“If that’s true of student loans or COVID-19 rules or whatever, you’d think it would be true of citizenship as well,” he said. “The states are right and the courts are probably going to agree with them.”

In addition to Hawaii, the plaintiffs in the suit filed in Massachusetts included New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Michigan, Colorado, Delaware, Nevada, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Additional suits were filed by a group led by the American Civil Liberties Union in New Hampshire, and another by Lawyers for Civil Rights.

The order on birthright citizenship does not take effect for 30 days, unlike Trump’s first-term attempt to ban travel to the United States from several Muslim-majority countries, which led to airport chaos. The timing means that executive-branch agencies can work through how to implement the order while the courts decide on its legality.

Brown, the Washington state attorney general, said his team continues to review Trump’s executive orders and expects the state will be involved in more litigation in the future. But, he added, the state is not going to sue over objectionable-but-legal moves by the Trump administration, such as pardoning most of those charged for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“I have no interest in continuing to sue the president of the United States, whether it’s Donald Trump or whoever the next president is, but it is my oath to defend the Constitution,” Brown said.

Trump’s birthright citizenship order, he added, was “plainly illegal.”

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Honolulu Star-Advertiser staff contributed to this New York Times article.

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