[Photo Credit: Reuters]

Illinois launched a legal challenge on Monday to block U.S. President Donald Trump from deploying hundreds of federalized National Guard troops into the streets of Chicago – the latest flashpoint in a growing number of court battles over the Republican president’s authority to deploy military forces domestically.

U.S. lawyers told the U.S. district judge overseeing the case during a hearing on Monday that the Texas National Guard was on the way to Chicago and that the administration could still deploy troops, while it organizes a legal response to Illinois’s request for a temporary restraining order. The judge gave the federal government two days to respond.

The Democratic-led state and the city of Chicago filed the lawsuit hours after a federal judge in Oregon on Sunday temporarily blocked Trump’s administration from sending any National Guard troops to police Portland, Oregon.

Chicago’s lawsuit, opens new tab is the fourth legal action targeting Trump’s unprecedented use of soldiers to police U.S. cities, suppress protests and bolster domestic immigration enforcement. Courts have not yet reached a final decision in any of those cases, but judges in California and Oregon have made initial rulings that Trump likely overstepped his authority.

The Illinois lawsuit took aim at a decision by the Trump administration over the weekend to federalize up to 300 members of the Illinois National Guard over the objections of Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker and another 400 from Texas to deploy into Chicago.

The Republican president is deploying the military to Illinois based on a “flimsy pretext” that alleges an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in a suburb of Chicago needs protecting as protests outside the building over Trump’s immigration crackdown continue, according to the lawsuit.

The state argues that the Trump administration has not met the legal conditions needed to allow it to federalize National Guard troops without Pritzker’s blessing and is violating the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law which sharply limits the use of the military for domestic enforcement.

The lawsuit also argues Trump’s actions violate the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which protects states’ rights, by usurping Pritzker’s role as the commander-in-chief of the National Guard in Illinois and by infringing on the state’s authority over local law enforcement.

The White House said that troops were needed to protect federal government employees from “violent riots” in Chicago.

President Trump will not turn a blind eye to the lawlessness,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said.

Illinois disputed Trump’s description of the city, saying in the lawsuit that “protests have been small, primarily peaceful, and unfortunately escalated by DHS’s own conduct.”

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