Four US human rights groups are challenging Trump administration sanctions they say criminalise cooperation with the International Criminal Court and obstruct efforts to pursue justice for Gaza.

A quartet of US human rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the Trump administration’s sanctions targeting members of the International Criminal Court for their roles in seeking to hold Israeli leaders accountable for alleged crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Human Rights Watch (HRW), and the Open Society Institute (OSI) filed suit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York challenging the Trump administration’s sanctions against ICC prosecutors and judges, a United Nations human rights expert, and three Palestinian human rights groups.

The groups argue that US President Donald Trump’s February 2025 executive order that imposed sanctions on the ICC are a “blatantly illegal attack on international justice and should be struck down”.

James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, called the sanctions “a slap in the face to victims and survivors of grave crimes everywhere who depend on the ICC as a court of last resort”.

Trump’s sanctions follow the ICC’s November 2024 issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defence minister, for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. The tribunal simultaneously issued warrants for the arrest of three Hamas leaders for the same categories of crimes allegedly committed on and........

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