Two US nonprofits have sued the Trump administration over sanctions targeting the International Criminal Court (ICC) — penalties that they say “violate Americans’ constitutional right to engage in Palestine-related” human rights advocacy.
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), an organization that promotes democracy and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa, and the Taxpayers Alliance Against Genocide (TAAG) filed a lawsuit Wednesday in a Manhattan federal court seeking to bar the Trump administration from using an executive order “to prevent US citizens from supporting investigations into US and Israeli abuses,” according to a statement released by the two organizations. Those measures “muzzle Palestine advocacy,” the statement added.
An executive order issued by US President Donald Trump in February 2025 authorizes punitive measures against ICC staffers, such as sanctions and bans on entering the United States, because of what the administration described as “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.”
Several other challenges to the ICC sanctions have been filed to date, but this lawsuit is the first that aims to stop Trump-appointed officials from using sanctions law to “bar Americans from supporting the ICC’s investigations into US and Israeli atrocity crimes, or from working with (UN special human rights envoy Francesca Albanese) and the sanctioned Palestinian NGOs,” the organizations’ statement said.
