A Manhattan Judge Bars Penalties for Helping the ICC

Judge Jesse Furman granted a preliminary injunction in DAWN et al. v. Trump et al., No. 26-cv-5957, a suit filed in July 2026 by Democracy for the Arab World Now and the Taxpayers Alliance Against Genocide. The order bars federal agencies from imposing civil fines or pursuing criminal penalties against the two groups for submitting evidence to the International Criminal Court or engaging with sanctioned Palestinian human rights organizations and a United Nations special rapporteur.

The challenge targets a February 2025 executive order that authorized sanctions against those assisting ICC investigations deemed harmful to U.S. interests. As reported, the court found the plaintiffs likely to succeed on their claim that applying the order to their advocacy regulates speech based on its content, and treated the groups' decision to stop speaking as the kind of harm an injunction exists to prevent.

What the court did not do is as notable as what it did. The injunction is narrow: it protects these two plaintiffs rather than vacating the order, and the opinion left the broader sanctions architecture standing. That leaves other organizations in the same posture to litigate individually, and leaves the government room to appeal on the scope question alone.

The ruling joins a growing set of district-court decisions finding First Amendment problems in sanctions aimed at ICC cooperation, including a separate case in Maine that survived a dismissal motion earlier this year. Taken together they suggest the executive order's speech-facing applications are the weakest part of it, even where courts have been unwilling to reach the order as a whole.