Lawsuits filed against Trump's order to strip US birthright citizenship

Several lawsuits have been filed by Democratic-led states and civil rights groups in response to executive orders President Donald Trump signed on his first day office.

A coalition of 18 Democratic-led states along with the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco took on an executive order that seeks to roll back birthright citizenship in the US.

They followed similar suits put forward by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and immigrant organizations, as they argued the Republican president's effort to end birthright citizenship is a violation of the US Constitution.

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said in a statement: "State attorneys general have been preparing for illegal actions like this one."

"Today’s immediate lawsuit sends a clear message to the Trump administration that we will stand up for our residents and their basic constitutional rights."

The lawsuits argue that the executive order violated the right enshrined in the Citizenship Clause of the US Constitution's 14th Amendment. It states that anyone born in the United States is considered a citizen.

A Supreme Court ruling from 1898 in United States vs. Wong Kim Ark, bore a decision that children born in the United States to non-citizen parents are entitled to US citizenship.

If Trump's new executive order be allowed to stand, it would mean that more than 150,000 children born annually in the United States would be denied for the first time the right to citizenship.

"President Trump does not have the authority to take away constitutional rights," Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a statement.