New York, with three other states, filed a lawsuit against the federal government Tuesday seeking to remove a cap on state and local tax deductions enacted in the new federal tax law.

The lawsuit aims to strike down the $10,000 cap on deductions of local property, sales and state income taxes included in the Republican tax law passed last December.

Those taxes were previously deductible in full. Taxpayers will first be held to the cap during next year's tax filing period.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo held a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning announcing the lawsuit, which he promised to file during his State of the State address in January.

"The so-called SALT provision was un-American," Cuomo said. "I said at the time it does tremendous damage to this state, and the other states, but New York is right up at the top of this list."

The states claim in the lawsuit that the federal cap violates their constitutional right as a sovereign entity to tax their citizens.

"Remember the Founding Fathers, which they love to quote, these are co-equal sovereigns, the federal government and the states," Cuomo said. "That was the basis of the Constitution and the 10th Amendment prohibited the federal government from invading a state's tax authority, and that's what they did by their own admission."

The cap on state and local tax deductions did not change the state's tax law outright, but it did place a burden on residents in high-tax areas of the state like Westchester and Nassau counties that have an average state and local tax deduction of more than $10,000.

Lawmakers in New York passed a work-around to the cap in this year's state budget that allows state residents to pay those taxes through a payroll tax or charitable deduction. That makes them fully deductible from a resident's federal taxes, but the IRS has questioned the use of a charitable deduction for that purpose.

"They've even tried to use the IRS to subvert our attempts to mitigate the damage to this state," Cuomo said.

Cuomo has claimed that the cap on state and local tax deductions was targeted at blue states that President Donald Trump failed to carry during the 2016 election. The lawsuit claims U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said publicly that the cap was intended to "send a message" to states like New York to change their tax policies. New York has among the highest state and local taxes in the country.

"They set up two sets of rules, one for the Republican states and one for the Democratic states," Cuomo said.

The states likened that behavior to that of King George III in the late 18th century against the American colonies in the lawsuit.

"For much of the colonial period, taxes were levied primarily by colonial governments which raised revenues from a diverse array of property and income taxes, among other sources," the lawsuit said. "When, in the late eighteenth century, the crown attempted to increase its own taxes, the colonies waged a war to preserve their right to self-government."

That was the basis for protections in the Constitution that guarantee states control over their own taxes, the lawsuit said. The states argued in the complaint that the federal government has allowed the full deduction of state and local income taxes since 1861, despite the federal government's need for revenue at the time.

The lawsuit also included testimony from former Gov. Mario Cuomo before Congress in the 1980s on a proposal to eliminate state and local tax deductions. Cuomo, and constitutional scholars, argued that eliminating the deduction would be unconstitutional and contrary to federalism in the United States. The proposal was eventually removed.

State Attorney General Barbara Underwood, who is leading the lawsuit, echoed those points in a video released by her office Tuesday.

"It goes beyond settled limits on the federal government's power to impose an income tax," Underwood said. "New York will not be bullied and we will not allow partisans in Washington to hurt our people or interfere with our policies."

The cap only affects residents in New York who itemize their deductions, rather than taking the standard deduction. More than three million taxpayers in New York state itemize, according to the lawsuit, and their average deductions total $21,943.

The Trump administration and other Republicans who supported the tax plan claim other provisions of the law, like lower federal income tax rates and a higher standard deduction, largely make up the difference for residents in high-tax states like New York.

Cuomo said on the conference call that the states will seek an expedited time frame for the legal action. Attorneys general from Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey have also joined the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of the Treasury said the agency is reviewing the complaint.