Four major American human rights organizations filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the Trump administration's sanctions regime against the International Criminal Court, arguing the measures unlawfully obstruct global efforts to hold perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity accountable. The plaintiffs — the American Friends Service Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Institute — say the sanctions have made it impossible for them to fully support victims seeking justice through the court. Their suit specifically targets the executive order President Trump signed in February 2025 authorizing penalties against ICC officials, judges and anyone assisting the court's work.
According to the plaintiffs, the campaign amounts to what they describe as a blatantly illegal attack on international justice, one that has spread far beyond its original targets to chill an entire ecosystem of advocacy and legal support surrounding the tribunal.
Why are the groups suing now?
The four organizations argue that the sanctions violate their constitutional rights to free speech and association while also breaching US obligations under international law. They contend the restrictions do not merely punish individuals directly named by the government but effectively criminalize the broader work of anyone who collaborates with the court, including researchers, lawyers and advocacy groups that were never formally sanctioned.
Neither the State Department nor the Justice Department immediately responded to requests for comment on the litigation.
What does the executive order actually authorize?
Signed in February 2025, the order declared a national emergency over the ICC's efforts to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute what it calls protected persons, according to the text of the White House's own description of the order. It permits financial and visa restrictions against anyone assisting ICC investigations involving American citizens or allied nations, and its reach extends to those providing material, technological or financial support to the court's activities, as outlined by Amnesty International's analysis of the policy. Amnesty noted that as of 25 March 2025, ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan was the only individual formally designated under the order, though the scope has since widened considerably. Research from Harvard Law School found the administration had expanded sanctions to at least 11 ICC officials, including nine judges and the chief prosecutor himself.
How did tensions with the court escalate?
Washington, which is not a member of the ICC, has long resisted the court's authority, but hostility intensified sharply after ICC prosecutors issued arrest warrants in November 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged crimes in Gaza. In response, the US sanctioned ICC prosecutors and judges, three prominent Palestinian human rights organizations, and the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories. This summer, Secretary of State Marco Rubio intensified the pressure further, launching a campaign urging ICC member states to abandon the court altogether, a push confirmed in a July 2026 report on the State Department's broader strategy.
The approach echoes tactics from Trump's first term, when his administration similarly pressured ICC officials investigating alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, according to the Harvard Law School research cited above. The Netanyahu warrant has also reverberated through US domestic politics; New York mayoral figure Zohran Mamdani, for instance, walked back a pledge to arrest Netanyahu, saying he lacked the legal authority to do so and instead calling on federal officials to act on the ICC warrant themselves.
How have the sanctions affected human rights work on the ground?
Individuals directly sanctioned have faced travel bans, frozen or closed bank accounts, and denial of access to digital services, with the dominance of US financial and technology firms causing those effects to ripple into other countries as well. Organizations not directly targeted — including the four plaintiffs — say the sanctions have nonetheless hindered their ability to represent victims before the court, submit legal filings, or coordinate with sanctioned Palestinian groups on litigation, advocacy and humanitarian efforts.
Shawan Jabarin, director of the Palestinian human rights group Al Haq, one of the organizations targeted by the administration, said last year that the sanctions had cut the group off from its bank accounts and left roughly 45 staff members without pay. He said the damage went well beyond logistics, describing a climate of fear in which longtime partner organizations severed contact to avoid falling afoul of the sanctions regime, given potential penalties of up to 20 years in prison and steep fines. He said most, if not all, of the American groups Al Haq had previously worked with stopped engaging with the organization formally or openly, and urged those partners to resist the pressure by any means available.
Katherine Gallagher, a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents victims before the ICC, framed the stakes in stark terms:
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. 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.
James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative — a program of the Open Society Foundations, which the administration also sanctioned last year — described the measures in similarly forceful language:
They betray historic US leadership in the cause of international justice.
Are other legal challenges underway?
Tuesday's filing is not the first legal pushback against the sanctions. Democracy for the Arab World Now and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide previously filed their own suit, now pending in federal court in New York, according to a report on the case. Separately, three sitting ICC judges sued the administration in Manhattan in June 2026, arguing the sanctions were unlawful and exceeded the government's statutory authority, according to coverage of that lawsuit; those same judges have also filed suit in New York over the sanctions, per the Open Society Justice Initiative's announcement. In a separate case, a federal court in Maine granted a preliminary injunction, finding the sanctions were likely to violate the First Amendment, according to a statement from the ACLU of Maine.
What happens next?
The New York case brought by Democracy for the Arab World Now and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide is now awaiting its next procedural step, to be scheduled by the court, according to the same report on that litigation. The Maine case will also continue following the court's preliminary injunction ruling, though no date for the next hearing has yet been made public. Tuesday's new lawsuit is expected to move through similar early procedural stages in the coming weeks.
Key Facts
- Four organizations — the American Friends Service Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Institute — filed suit on Tuesday over the ICC sanctions.
- The challenged executive order was signed by President Trump in February 2025 and authorizes financial and visa restrictions on those assisting ICC investigations.
- At least 11 ICC officials, including nine judges and the chief prosecutor, have been sanctioned, according to Harvard Law School research.
- Separate lawsuits are already pending from Democracy for the Arab World Now and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide, three sitting ICC judges, and in a Maine federal court where a preliminary injunction was granted.
- Palestinian rights group Al Haq says roughly 45 staff went unpaid after sanctions froze its bank accounts.
