A US federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from imposing sanctions on two US-based human rights groups for assisting the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigations into war crimes in Gaza.
In a 30-page order issued Tuesday, Jesse M Furman, a judge in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, granted a preliminary injunction to the two groups, Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) and Taxpayers Alliance Against Genocide (Taag).
The two organizations sued the Trump administration this summer, challenging an executive order issued in February 2025 imposing sanctions against the ICC.
The order warned that the U.S. government would “impose tangible and meaningful consequences” on those involved in investigations that Washington said threatened the national security of the United States or its allies, including Israel.
The order came after the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Both men denied the charges against them, and the U.S. government also opposed the court’s decision to issue arrest warrants.
In his opinion, Furman noted that last year, two law professors filed a separate lawsuit challenging the 2025 executive order, and that the court ruled that the executive order “violated these plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights because it constituted content-based regulation of their speech-based activities and had not withstood strict scrutiny.”
Furman said this lawsuit brought by Dawn and Taag — groups he described as “American defense organizations” — raises a “substantially similar challenge.” He wrote that the groups were challenging the 2025 order on “both statutory and constitutional grounds, repeating many of the arguments made in previous cases.”
Dawn and Taag are rights groups that worked to gather information for the ICC as it investigated allegations of war crimes against Palestinians.
“The court concludes that the 2025 Order likely violates plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights because it constitutes content-based regulation of their speech-based activities and cannot survive strict scrutiny,” Furman wrote.
However, the judge stopped short of declaring the decree “on its face unconstitutional” and rejected the groups’ request to “enjoin the president and adopt a ‘universal’ injunction prohibiting the enforcement of the 2025 decree against anyone.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a Guardian request for comment on the decision.
A spokesperson for the US State Department said in a statement to the Guardian that “we do not comment on pending litigation” but added: “The Trump administration has been clear: the ICC poses an intolerable threat to US sovereignty. »
Joseph Pace, attorney for Dawn and Taag, described Tuesday’s ruling as “a victory for the First Amendment and an important step in dissolving the ICC sanctions regime.”
And in a statement, Omar Shakir, executive director of Dawn, said: “Today, a US federal court significantly curbed the Trump administration’s efforts to shield Israeli genocide officials and their American backers from justice. »
Dawn also said she would “immediately resume” her advocacy with the ICC “to prosecute Israeli and American perpetrators of serious crimes.”
The move comes just days after the United States imposed financial sanctions on the ICC.
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