Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other groups have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for its actions against the International Criminal Court (ICC). According to the complaint from the HRW, the American Friends Service Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Open Society Institute, sanctions imposed on the ICC by the Trump administration prevent the organization from carrying out its duties.
The lawsuit stems from an executive order signed by Trump in February 2025, which said the ICC has “without a legitimate basis, asserted jurisdiction over and opened preliminary investigations concerning personnel of the United States and certain of its allies, including Israel, and has further abused its power by issuing baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.” It declared that the ICC has “no jurisdiction over the United States or Israel, as neither country is party to the Rome Statute or a member of the ICC.”
The complaint asserts that Trump’s order “authorizes draconian sanctions.” Describing such “draconian sanctions,” the filing calls the Trump administration’s actions an “unlawful abuse of power constituting a frontal attack on the rule of law, the independence of judges, prosecutors, and lawyers, basic precepts undergirding the international legal order, and the principle of equal access to justice.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio also sanctioned two judges from the ICC in December, accusing them of illegitimately targeting Israel.
The DOJ has separately emphasized that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Americans. “The ICC has acted in an increasingly lawless and illegitimate manner,” then-Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote, explaining that the ICC has “disregarded its own complementarity requirement, and pursued investigations that appear driven as much by political pressure and institutional self-interest as by legal merit.”
More recently, Rubio launched an effort to dismantle the ICC, saying it stands as a threat to U.S. sovereignty by positioning itself as a “global tribunal staffed by unelected globalist bureaucrats who claim their power is almost unlimited.”
