Several police and firefighters pension funds are fighting for the right to invest in the Sudan, which is off limits because of the atrocities occurring within its borders. The charge is that the state of Illinois is violating the U.S. Constitution by in effect conducting its own foreign policy, Dow Jones Newswires reports. The issue arose recently with a new state law that requires Illinois to sell off an estimated $1 billion of investments in companies that do business with Sudan. The National Foreign Trade Council along with the above-mentioned pension funds, jumped on it and claimed in a challenge to the law – the first of its kind in the country – that it “impedes the federal government from speaking with one voice with respect to its regulation of commerce with the Republic of Sudan.” In the suit, which states that “this blunderbuss policy” could have a detrimental effect on a “fragile situation,” the plaintiffs claim divesting will cost the pension funds money as they will forced to place their assets in lower-yielding bonds. State Sen. Jacqueline Collins (D-Chicago), who sponsored the law, called the lawsuit, you guess it, “frivolous.”