A US federal appeals court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to keep enforcing economic sanctions against United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, notorious for her anti-Israel bias.
The decision temporarily sets aside a previous legal block while an overarching challenge regarding the penalties winds through the justice system.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued an order on Monday granting the federal government's request to pause a lower court's ruling. That earlier decision had temporarily frozen the enforcement of sanctions levied against Albanese under the directives of Executive Order 14203. The appellate court's intervention gives a major mid-lawsuit win to the administration, which penalized Albanese in 2025 due to her outspoken bias and her active support for International Criminal Court (ICC) probes looking into American and Israeli nationals.
Because United Nations regulations prevent Albanese from launching a lawsuit in her own name, the legal challenge was initiated by her husband and her daughter, who holds US citizenship. The family argued in court that the restrictive measures brought profound personal and financial hardship to their household and infringed upon Albanese’s constitutional free speech rights. In May, a US district judge agreed with their reasoning and granted an injunction that temporarily stopped the White House from executing the sanctions.
The Trump administration mounted a quick appeal, countering that the lower court had overstepped its bounds and infringed upon the executive branch's constitutional mandate to direct foreign policy and leverage international sanctions. On Monday, a panel of judges for the D.C. Circuit determined that the government successfully met the necessary legal thresholds to secure a stay. The order did not render a final judgment on the ultimate legality of the sanctions themselves, focusing strictly on whether they could be enforced while the litigation continues.
The outcome was welcomed by UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer.
“VICTORY: Francesca Albanese loses major battle as U.S. Court of Appeals denies her bid to suspend sanctions pending appeal. Sanctions to remain in force throughout the case. Two judges signalled her central First Amendment claim is unlikely to succeed. We submitted amicus brief," Neuer wrote on social media.
Albanese’s history of anti-Israel statements and actions is well-documented and dates back to social media posts uncovered in 2022, in which she claimed that the “Jewish lobby" controls the US.
At the time, Albanese rejected arguments that the comments about the “Jewish lobby" were antisemitic and claimed they were “mischaracterized", but her anti-Israel bias has continued to be exposed since.
Her hostility toward Israel has grown since the October 7, 2023 massacre, which Albanese described as an act that must be viewed in “context" and as a response to Israeli “aggression."
In late March, Albanese claimed that the world has given Israel "a license to torture Palestinians", alleging that "torture has effectively become state policy" in Israel.
In another incident, Albanese mocked the bereaved mother of a victim of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre, advising her on social media to “change medication".