Order finds 2025 sanctions likely unconstitutionally restrict speech
A federal judge in New York has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from sanctioning two US-based human rights organizations for their work gathering information for the International Criminal Court’s investigation into war crimes in Gaza.
In a 30-page order issued Tuesday, US District Judge Jesse M. Furman of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York granted a preliminary injunction to Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) and Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide (Taag). Both groups sued the Trump administration this summer, challenging a February 2025 executive order that imposed sanctions on the ICC and warned of “tangible and significant consequences” for people involved in investigations Washington said threatened US national security or that of its allies, including Israel.
The executive order followed the ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Both men have rejected the accusations, and the US government opposed the court’s decision to issue the warrants.
Dawn and Taag are rights groups that had worked to gather information for the ICC as it investigated allegations of war crimes against Palestinians.
In his opinion, Furman noted that an earlier lawsuit challenging the 2025 executive order — brought by two law professors — had held that the order “violated those plaintiffs’ first amendment rights because it constituted a content-based regulation of their speech-based activities and did not survive strict scrutiny.”
Furman wrote that Dawn and Taag, which he described as “American advocacy organizations,” raised a “substantially similar challenge” on both statutory and constitutional grounds, reasserting many of the arguments made in the earlier cases.
“The court concludes that the 2025 order likely violates plaintiffs’ first amendment rights because it constitutes a content-based regulation of their speech-based activities and cannot survive strict scrutiny,” Furman wrote.
The judge stopped short of declaring the executive order “facially unconstitutional” and rejected the groups’ request to “enjoin the president and to enter a ‘universal’ injunction barring enforcement of the 2025 order against anyone.” The relief granted applies only to Dawn and Taag.
A US State Department spokesperson said in a statement that the department “does not comment on pending litigation” but added: “The Trump administration has been clear: the ICC poses an intolerable threat to US sovereignty.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
Joseph Pace, a lawyer for Dawn and Taag, described Tuesday’s decision as “a victory for the first amendment and an important step in unraveling the ICC sanctions regime.”
In a statement, Omar Shakir, Dawn’s executive director, said: “Today, a US federal court has put the brakes in a major way on the Trump administration’s efforts to shield from justice the Israeli officials who have perpetrated a genocide and their US backers.”
Dawn also said that it would “immediately resume” its advocacy with the ICC “to prosecute Israeli and American perpetrators of grave crimes.”
The ruling comes days after the US imposed financial sanctions on the ICC itself.