Matthew Smith, CEO of Fortify Rights, speaks at a hearing in Bangkok at the Lawyers Committee of Thailand on Feb. 13. Photo courtesy Fortify Rights

A Maine resident is suing the Trump administration over economic sanctions the president imposed that he says forced him to stop his work on investigating human rights violations abroad.

Matthew Smith is CEO of the nonprofit Fortify Rights and regularly works with the International Criminal Court’s prosecutors to address genocide and the forced deportation of Myanmar’s Rohingya people.

President Donald Trump announced sanctions against the ICC in February after the court issued an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister over alleged war crimes in Gaza. The sanctions were expected to include blocking property and assets and not allowing ICC officials, employees and relatives to enter the United States, The Associated Press reported.

Smith and an international  human rights lawyer from New York, Akila Radhakrishnan, say this order stifles their important work. In a lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Maine, they are also suing Trump’s secretaries of state and treasury, the U.S. attorney general and the acting director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Smith and Radhakrishnan are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and its Maine chapter. The group alleges that Trump’s order violates their right to free speech protected by First Amendment. rights, which bar governments from restricting American expression.

According to the lawsuit, Smith has met regularly with the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor for several years, sharing stories from Rohingya refugees about horrific crimes in Myanmar and other “research critical to understanding which specific individuals may be criminally liable for atrocity crimes against the Rohingya.”

Radhakrishnan has worked with ICC prosecutors on addressing sexual and gender-based violence against Afghan women by the Taliban regime.

Smith said Trump’s order has forced him to stop communications with the court “because of the substantial risk that they will cause Plaintiff Smith to be subjected to penalties.”

“Because of this order, I’ve been forced to stop helping the ICC investigate horrific crimes committed against the people of Myanmar, including mass murder, torture and human trafficking,” Smith said in a written statement released by the ACLU. “This executive order doesn’t just disrupt our work — it actively undermines international justice efforts and obstructs the path to accountability for communities facing unthinkable horrors.”

The ICC operates in the Netherlands and serves more than 100 countries. It was established by the international community in 1998 as an independent court of last resort for serious crimes when an individual country isn’t able or willing to prosecute.

Neither the United States nor Israel recognizes the court officially, even though the U.S. helped establish the ICC in 1998.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment sent Friday morning.