Two U.S.-based advocacy groups sued the Trump administration on July 15, saying that sanctions imposed on the International Criminal Court (ICC) violate constitutional free speech protections after the administration launched a diplomatic campaign this week aimed at dismantling the court.
In a lawsuit filed at a federal court in New York, Democracy for the Arab World Now and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide sought to block President Donald Trump’s February 2025 executive order.
The order has led to sanctions against ICC judges and prosecutors and Palestinian human rights groups who called for the court to probe accusations that the United States and Israel committed war crimes during the war in Gaza.
“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,” Omar Shakir, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, said in a statement.
Trump’s objections to the ICC, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands, go back to his first term. A judge blocked a similar executive order from 2020 and said it likely violated the First Amendment. It was rescinded by President Joe Biden’s administration in 2021.
The Trump administration last year started an effort to penalize ICC officials after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Three judges from the ICC have sued the Trump administration over the sanctions.
The ICC previously opened an investigation into U.S. servicemen and intelligence officers and has not closed these cases, according to the State Department.
“The ICC poses an intolerable threat to U.S. sovereignty—it claims the authority to prosecute and even imprison American servicemen and officials operating on behalf of America’s national interest,” the department said in a statement. “Americans never signed up for this, and all American presidents since the ICC’s ratification have maintained that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Americans.”
Established in 2002, the ICC prosecutes genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity if a member of the ICC is unable or unwilling to undertake prosecutions itself. The United States has never been a member of the court. But the court’s statutes give it the authority to prosecute crimes committed in a member state by nationals of nonmember states, including Americans.
The ICC’s spokesperson, Oriane Maillet, declined to comment.
U.S. actions under consideration, according to the State Department, include visa revocations and travel bans for ICC personnel, increased sanctions against the ICC and affiliated organizations, diplomatic calls urging other nations that are not party to the ICC to leverage their diplomatic networks to take similar actions, and increased scrutiny of nations that decline to reject the ICC’s authority while relying on U.S. assistance.
