Human rights groups sue Trump administration over ‘crippling’ ICC sanctions

Four prominent US human rights organizations have accused the Trump administration of using its “crippling” sanctions regime against the international criminal court (ICC) to undermine global efforts to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court on Tuesday, the groups – the American Friends Service Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Institute – argued that the administration’s targeting of the ICC, as well as of groups and individuals affiliated with it or assisting its work, amounts to a “blatantly illegal attack on international justice”, the groups said.

The suit challenges Trump’s February 2025 executive order, which authorized sanctions on ICC officials, judges and others working to support its investigation of Israeli crimes in Palestine – one of 18 investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity the Netherlands-based tribunal is overseeing.

The US state department and justice department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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

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

Those attacks, and Trump’s executive order, 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 the case – in violation of both constitutional protections for free speech and association and US obligations under international law, the lawsuit argues.

“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.”

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

But 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.

“Because of the sanctions regime and the threat of severe criminal and civil penalties ... if I continued my work as a lawyer as before, I would have been or could be prosecuted or fined,” Gallagher said in a press conference held by the groups on Tuesday. “I have therefore ceased actively practicing before the ICC. [...] The government cannot dictate which clients lawyers can represent, which defendants are off limits from accountability and what venue for justice and accountability are permissible.

Shawan Jabarin, the director of the human rights group Al Haq, one of the Palestinian organizations targeted by the Trump administration over its work with the ICC, told the Guardian in an interview last year that the sanctions had left the group unable to access its bank accounts or process donations, leaving about 45 people without pay.

But Jabarin also said the effect of the sanctions had extended beyond logistical matters and created a climate of fear due to which longtime allies had cut communications with the group to avoid running afoul of the sanctions regime, with 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 at the time of several US groups with which Al Haq had collaborated in the past. He had called on those partners at the time 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 US 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 Trump 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”.

“Independent courts can function only when judges, prosecutors and rights advocates are free to do their work without fear of political retaliation. We believe that no one is above the law,” he said in the press conference on Tuesday. “The executive order shields the perpetrators of war crimes from scrutiny while punishing those who pursue accountability. Justice must be fair and impartial, not only directed at America’s adversaries.”

Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.