Activists Sue Trump Administration Over Palestine Advocacy-Related Sanctions

Ryan J. Farrick — July 16, 2026

The White House. Image via Wikimedia Commons/user:AgnosticPreachersKid. (CCA-BY-3.0).

The Trump administration, for its part, has described the lawsuit as a bad-faith effort to “enable further ICC overreach.”

Advocacy groups are suing the Trump administration over sanctions they say have been selectively applied to pro-Palestine organizations and activists, including International Criminal Court officials and a regional expert from the United Nations.

According to The Guardian, the lawsuit was filed earlier this week in a Manhattan-based federal court. Attorneys for the two plaintiff organizations say that the Trump administration’s 2025 sanctions packaged has had a “profound” effect on Palestine-related advocacy, forcing workers to reconsider professional relationships and, in some cases, change careers.

“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, the executive director of Democracy in the Arab World Now (Dawn).

Dawn, notes The Guardian, filed the lawsuit alongside its co-plaintiff, the New York-based Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide. In court filings, attorneys wrote that both groups have worked on International Criminal Court submissions on alleged Israel war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza. Dawn has also worked with sanctioned Palestinian charities to host conference sand lobby policymakers.

“Each of these activities is protected speech and association, squarely within the First Amendment’s heartland,” the lawsuit says.

The Trump administration, for its part, has described the lawsuit as a bad-faith effort to “enable further ICC overreach.”

A 2015 image of then-Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Rubio. Image via Wikimedia Commons via Flickr/user:Gage Skidmore. (CCA-BY-2.0).

“Activists groups seeking to enable further ICC overreach are proving Secretary [Marco] Rubio’s point: the ICC poses an intolerable threat to U.S. sovereignty; it claims the authority to prosecute and even imprison Americans as well as nationals of U.S. allies that, like the United States, have never accepted the ICC’s jurisdiction,” the U.S. Department of State said in a statement.

The Trump administration clashed with the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court through 2025, shortly after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjami Netanyahu. Reuters notes that at least three ICC judges have filed separate lawsuits over the White House’s sanctions.

On Monday, though Secretary of State Marco Rubio doubled down on the administration’s rhetoric, writing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the International Criminal Court must be “dismantle[d].”

“The U.S. is launching a diplomatics campaign with a simple message—sovereign states over globalism,” Rubio wrote. “Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle ICC—brick by brick, if necessary.”

The European Union on Tuesday reiterated its support for the court.

“Attacks or threats against the court, elected officials, personnel or those cooperating with the court are not acceptable,” EU Commission spokesperson Anouar El Anouni told Reuters. “And let’s also recall that the ICC does not target sovereign states, nor does it constitute a threat to their sovereignty.”

“We have noted the U.S. statements, the position is not a new one, but we are worried about the hardened tone,” the Dutch Foreign Ministry told Reuters.

Joseph Pace, an attorney representing the two advocacy groups behind the lawsuit, said that the United States government can take whichever position on Israel and Palestine it pleases—but it cannot, as part of its policy, regulate Americans’ right to engage in constitutionally-protected speech.

“The U.S. government has the largest megaphone in the world and it is perfectly capable of pleading its case—or Israel’s,” Pace said. “What it cannot do is bar Americans from sharing a contrary perspective with the ICC, much less criminalize contact with non-American human rights defenders whose only ‘misdeed’ was calling for justice for U.S. and Israeli crimes.”