US sanctions against UN official and rights groups violate first amendment, lawsuit claims

Two US advocacy groups sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, alleging that sanctions targeting Palestinian rights organizations, international criminal court (ICC) officials and a UN expert have unlawfully violated Americans’ first amendment rights.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, argues that the administration’s sweeping 2025 sanctions package has had a “profound” chilling effect on Palestine-related advocacy, compelling Americans to sever professional relationships and abandon constitutionally protected work.

“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, executive director of Democracy in the Arab World Now (Dawn), a Washington-based advocacy group focused on US foreign policy in the Middle East. Dawn joined the New York-based Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide in Wednesday’s lawsuit.

The 43-page legal complaint notes that both organizations have worked on ICC submissions documenting Israeli war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza. Dawn has also worked with the three sanctioned Palestinian NGOs and Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur, to publish research, convene conferences and lobby US policymakers.

“Each of these activities is protected speech and association, squarely within the First Amendment’s heartland,” the lawsuit states. If either group continues this work, American employees could face criminal prosecution and civil penalties under Donald Trump’s executive order 14203.

The suit comes two days after Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, threatened to go beyond sanctions and dismantle the entire international court.

Several US legal experts have rallied in support of the lawsuit’s first amendment claim, including those who have already sued the Trump administration on similar grounds.

“I had to stop certain aspects of my work supporting affected populations around the world,” said Akila Radhakrishnan, an international human rights lawyer who sued the administration last year for halting her work advising the ICC on sexual and gender-based violence claims. “The US attacks have disrupted the ecosystem for international justice, devastating victims’ prospects for justice the world over.”

Both Radhakrishnan’s Maine lawsuit and the latest New York filing claim that Trump’s ICC sanctions exceed the limits of his presidential authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, noting that the law exempts noncommercial “personal communications” from sanctions.

“If the Executive is permitted to blow past constitutional and statutory restraints here, there is little to stop it from weaponizing IEEPA to target other disfavored viewpoints,” the lawsuit says. “A future president could, for example, declare a ‘national emergency’ over high energy prices, designate foreign environmental groups that campaign against fossil fuel extraction, and cut off American climate advocates from their overseas partners … The list of potential abuses is virtually endless.”

The suit also describes the sanctions measures as “hopelessly ineffective” at achieving Trump’s stated objective of halting “baseless” ICC prosecutions. “Suppressing [advocates’] speech, after all, does nothing to prevent ICC prosecutors from conducting their own investigations,” the legal brief says.

The lawsuit names Trump; Rubio; Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary; Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general; and Brad Smith, director of the office of foreign assets control, as defendants.

“It is bad enough that the Trump administration is using extraordinary powers to protect Israeli officials from efforts to bring them to justice for their genocide and war crimes,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch. “But it is blatantly unconstitutional for Trump to threaten American citizens and residents for assisting such efforts.”