The Daily Fuckup

Three International Criminal Court judges filed suit in the Southern District of New York on June 24, 2026, challenging U.S. sanctions tied to the court-related program created under Executive Order 14203. The complaint names judges Kimberly Prost, Solomy Balungi Bossa, and Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini-Gansou and says the sanctions were imposed because of their official judicial work. The case asks the court to block the designations and unwind the restrictions.

The filing says the sanctions have frozen assets and interfered with financial transactions, but those allegations have not been tested in court. The judges argue that the government used emergency economic powers in a way that Congress never intended, and that the ICC-related sanctions program was built on authorities including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act. OFAC’s own program page says the ICC-related sanctions framework rests on multiple legal authorities, and identifies Executive Order 14203 as having been signed on February 6, 2025.

OFAC’s recent-actions notices show the program did not stop with one designation. Treasury added ICC officials in February 2025, then issued later actions in 2026 that included additional ICC-related designations, a designation removal, and new general licenses. That timeline matters here because the lawsuit is not about a single one-day action; it is about a sanctions program that has continued to evolve over more than a year.

For now, the only fact established by the filing is that the judges are asking a federal court to review the sanctions and decide whether they can stand. The government has not yet had a merits ruling on the complaint, and the case does not itself determine whether the sanctions are lawful. What it does do is move the dispute from the sanctions list and the diplomatic realm into open litigation, where the administration will have to defend the legal basis for targeting judges over work they say they performed in office.