Trump Sued for Violating Americans’ Rights With ICC Sanctions

The Trump administration is being sued over its sanctions on the International Criminal Court.

Two American nonprofits, Democracy for the Arab World Now and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide, sued White House officials in federal court Wednesday over President Trump’s February 2025 executive order, which placed sanctions on ICC judges, prosecutors, and Palestinian human rights groups seeking to investigate alleged U.S. and Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The lawsuit alleges that the sanctions violate the Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech and “unconstitutionally restrict Americans from seeking justice on Palestine at the ICC,” including by “limiting what Americans can say to an international tribunal or to foreign advocates, as well as by limiting their ability to associate with the sanctioned parties.”

As a result of Trump’s order, DAWN and TAAG said that they have avoided filing submissions to the ICC and working with those hit by the sanctions, like Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestine, out of fear of facing criminal charges themselves.

“The Trump administration is using the blunt instrument of economic sanctions not only to punish human rights defenders but to police the political expression ​of millions of Americans,” said Omar Shakir, executive director of DAWN, in a statement.

Trump’s 2025 executive order followed a similar attempt to target the ICC in his first term. That attempt was blocked by a judge in 2020 and formally rescinded under President Biden in 2021. This lawsuit comes two days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration would seek to dismantle the court, possibly through tools such as travel bans, visa revocations, increased sanctions against the ICC and its affiliates, and diplomatic pressure on countries to withdraw from the ICC.

In an op-ed column for The Wall Street Journal, Rubio called the court “a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states—and to prosecute and arrest our citizens … backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.”

Late last month, three ICC judges sued the Trump administration over sanctions imposed against them, which left them unable to access any assets in the U.S. or engage in any transactions with American entities including through the “provision of funds, goods or services.” Wednesday’s lawsuit seeks to protect Americans who are trying to seek justice for Palestine from the same fate. ...