CHICAGO (WAND) — Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul filed a lawsuit , along with three other states, challenging the executive order ending birthright citizenship signed by President Donald Trump on Monday.

Birthright citizenship, the practice of granting citizenship to babies born in the country, has been part of the U.S. Constitution since the 14th Amendment was enacted in 1868.

Attorney General Kwame Raoul spoke during the Illinois delegation breakfast in Chicago on August 21, 2024.

Attorney General Raoul and the coalition are challenging the order, arguing it violates the constitutional rights to which all children born in the U.S. are entitled.

“That one of Donald Trump’s first day in office as president should be so diametrically opposed to our values as Americans is incredibly disappointing, though not surprising. The children born in the U.S. to immigrants are entitled to the rights and privileges that go along with U.S. citizenship,” Raoul said. “We need to discuss bipartisan commonsense immigration reforms, but denying birthright citizenship, which dates back centuries and has been upheld twice by the U.S. Supreme Court, is not the solution. As Attorney General, and as the proud son of Haitian immigrants, I will continue to stand with my fellow attorneys general to defend the constitutional rights of all children born in this country.”

On his first day in office, Trump said that automatic citizenship was "just ridiculous."

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Raoul, joined by attorneys general of Arizona, Oregon and Washington, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, seeking to invalidate the executive order and to enjoin any actions taken to implement it. The states are requesting immediate relief through both a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to prevent the president’s order from taking effect.

If the order is allowed to stand, Raoul said that infants stripped of their United States citizenship will lose their most basic rights and will be forced to live under the threat of deportation.

In addition to harming hundreds of thousands of residents, Raoul’s filing pointed out the order significantly harms the states themselves too. Among other harms, this order will cause the states to lose federal funding to programs that they administer, such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and foster care and adoption assistance programs, which all rely at least in part on the immigration status of the resident being served.

In another effort to stop the order, 18 states, plus the District of Columbia and San Francisco, sued in federal court to block Trump's order. That suit is being led by New Jersey Democratic Attorney General Matt Platkin.