The United States government has reached a settlement in a federal lawsuit challenging a Biden administration executive order that placed sanctions on Israeli citizens and organizations in the West Bank.
Announced this week by the Lawfare Project, the settlement officially resolves a lawsuit titled Texans for Israel v. U.S. Department of the Treasury. As part of the June 3 agreement, the U.S. government stated it rejects any policy that would infringe on Israel’s sovereignty or specifically target private organizations and Israeli citizens living in the West Bank. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also issued a formal assurance that it will not take enforcement action against the plaintiffs.
The lawsuit was originally filed to challenge Executive Order 14115. The Biden administration introduced the measure as a response to reports of settler violence. However, the plaintiffs argued the sweeping provisions were used to penalize nonviolent Jewish protest groups while ignoring Palestinian individuals.
The plaintiffs included the group Texans for Israel, the Israeli civil-society organization Regavim, and several individuals. In their complaint, they alleged the sanctions violated the First and Fifth Amendments by attempting to chill political speech critical of a two-state solution.
Brooke Goldstein, founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project, which funded the litigation, said the settlement repudiates the idea that the presence of Jews in the region is illegal.
“A sanctions program presented as targeting ‘violence’ was applied exclusively against Jews, including a mother of eight whose only ‘offense’ was leading peaceful protests,” Goldstein said in a release. “That is viewpoint discrimination, it is religious discrimination, and it is fundamentally un-American. The U.S. government has now categorically rejected any policy that targets Israeli citizens and private organizations in Judea and Samaria.”
The resolution of the lawsuit follows a major policy shift in Washington. President Trump revoked the executive order on his first day in office. Within days of the revocation, OFAC removed 33 designated individuals and entities from its sanctions list and unblocked their assets.
According to the terms of the settlement, the government acknowledged that Reut Ben Haim, a mother of eight and founder of the Tzav 9 protest movement, was sanctioned without evidence showing she directly participated in violent actions. OFAC also reaffirmed in a letter that it does not sanction people for engaging in constitutionally protected speech or religious practices.
Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School who advised the legal team, pointed out the specific nature of the original enforcement.
“Given the supposed epidemic of settler violence, it is notable that the sanctions imposed against it—beginning with Biden’s executive order—target Jews not for murder, but for protesting aid to Hamas or advocating against illegal Palestinian construction,” Kontorovich said.
While the U.S. has officially pulled back on these specific sanctions, international pressure remains. Over the last two weeks, the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand have imposed their own coordinated sanctions on several Israeli individuals and entities.
Some of the international targets include plaintiffs from the U.S. lawsuit, including Regavim and its director general, Meir Deutsch. According to the Lawfare Project, Canada’s announcement justified its recent measures by stating the targeted organizations and individuals were undermining the viability of a two-state solution.
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