Four rights groups sue Trump administration over ICC sanctions

Lawsuit says executive order violates free speech, international law

Four U.S. human rights organizations — the American Friends Service Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Institute — sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its sanctions against the International Criminal Court, arguing the measures amount to a “blatantly illegal attack on international justice.”

The complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, challenges President Donald Trump’s February 2025 executive order, which authorized sanctions on ICC officials, judges and others working to support the court’s investigation of Israeli crimes in Palestine — one of 18 investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity the Netherlands-based tribunal is overseeing. The U.S. State Department and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The U.S. government has long opposed and sought to impede the work of the court, of which it is not a party, but those efforts escalated after ICC prosecutors issued arrest warrants in November 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over crimes committed in Gaza. The U.S. responded by sanctioning ICC prosecutors and judges, three leading Palestinian human rights groups and Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestinian territory.

Earlier this summer, Secretary of State Marco Rubio escalated efforts against the ICC, announcing a campaign aimed at “dismantling” the court by pressuring member states to leave.

The lawsuit argues that the sanctions undermine access to justice for victims of major human rights violations and criminalize the work of those seeking to combat impunity by collaborating with the court — including the plaintiffs — in violation of constitutional protections for free speech and association and U.S. obligations under international law.

“The Trump administration took the extraordinary step to not only deny Palestinians and victims of US torture equal access to justice, but to criminalize and punish them, their lawyers and advocates, and their partners,” said Katherine Gallagher, a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents victims before the ICC. “All victims of international crimes – from Sudan and Ukraine to Palestine and Afghanistan – need and deserve to have an independent and strong ICC able to fulfill its mission of ending impunity, without fear or favor.”

Individuals placed under U.S. sanctions over their work for the ICC have been subjected to travel bans, had their bank accounts closed or frozen, and been denied access to digital services. Because of the dominance of U.S. financial and technology institutions, the sanctions have trickled down and affected their ability to access services in other countries as well.

The sanctions also affected rights groups not directly targeted — including the four plaintiffs — by hindering their ability to represent victims before the court, make legal and policy submissions to it, or collaborate with the sanctioned Palestinian groups on litigation, advocacy campaigns, research and humanitarian aid efforts.

Shawan Jabarin, director of Al Haq, one of the Palestinian organizations targeted by the administration over its work with the ICC, told the Guardian last year that the sanctions had left the group unable to access its bank accounts or process donations, leaving about 45 people without pay. Jabarin said the impact extended beyond logistics and created a climate of fear in which longtime allies cut communications with the group to avoid running afoul of the sanctions regime, which carries potential punishments of up to 20 years in prison and exorbitant fines. “Most of them – if not all – they stopped working with us or engaging with us formally and openly,” Jabarin said of several U.S. groups with which Al Haq had previously collaborated, and he called on those partners to “fight back with all means.”

Tuesday’s lawsuit follows one filed last month by Democracy in the Arab World Now (Dawn), a Washington-based advocacy group focused on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and the New York-based Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide, as well as legal challenges brought by some of the sanctioned individuals themselves, including Albanese’s family and three sitting ICC judges.

James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, a program of Open Society Foundations, which the administration also explicitly threatened last year, called the sanctions “an assault on the rule of law, independent judges and prosecutors, and civil society in the United States and around the world.” “They betray historic US leadership in the cause of international justice,” he added.