US Court grants temporary injunction blocking US ICC sanctions on Francesca Albanese on First Amendment grounds

14 May 2026

In LC v Trump the US District Court for the District of Columbia has granted a preliminary injunction suspending the effect of US sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The case was brought by Ms Albanese’s daughter and husband, who argued that the sanctions violated the First Amendment to the US Constitution and caused them direct, concrete harm. Ms Albanese was appointed in 2022. In 2025 she was sanctioned by the US for directly engaging with the International Criminal Court in “efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries”. See our US-ICC pages for information on ICC designations under EO 14203. As a result she and her immediate family were barred from entering the US.

Ms Albanese’s daughter and husband applied for a preliminary injunction to suspend her designation pending determination of their case. The Court granted it and held:

• Ms Albanese’s daughter and husband could bring a claim because they suffered concrete harm of their own, including frozen property assets and travel restrictions, and could assert Ms Albanese’s First Amendment rights on her behalf, since she was prevented from suing in her own name as a UN official (the UN refused to let Ms Albanese pursue a claim).

• The First Amendment applied to Ms Albanese because she had substantial connections to the US, including owning property in Washington DC, holding a US mortgage, paying US property taxes, and having a US citizen daughter.

• The US sanctions abridged Ms Albanese’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech because:
  • Her only “engagement” with the ICC was making non-binding recommendations — in other words, speech.
  • The sanctions targeted her because of the views she expressed, making them a content-based restriction on speech, as the court in Open Society Justice Initiative v Trump had previously held in relation to US-ICC sanctions.
  • Content-based restrictions are presumptively unconstitutional. The government failed to show the sanctions were narrowly tailored to a compelling interest.

• Ms Albanese’s daughter and husband suffered irreparable harm, including effective loss of access to the US, interference with their property rights, and a chilling effect on family life, that could not be adequately remedied by damages alone.

The case will now proceed to a full trial, where the Court will decide whether the decision to designate Ms Albanese was ultra vires.

See our coverage of three earlier rulings that found that EO 14203’s ICC sanctions raise serious First Amendment concerns — Open Society Justice Initiative v Trump, Smith v Trump, and Rona v Trump.