Overview
- The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control re-added Francesca Albanese to its Specially Designated Nationals list on Wednesday, reviving measures that freeze U.S.-linked assets and bar many banking and credit-card transactions.
- A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit issued an administrative stay of a lower-court injunction, a procedural move that lets the government enforce the sanctions while the appeal proceeds but does not rule on the case’s merits.
- Earlier this month U.S. District Judge Richard Leon granted a preliminary injunction finding the sanctions likely infringed Albanese’s First Amendment rights, which led OFAC to remove her from the list before the appeals court intervened.
- Albanese and her family say the designation caused concrete harms such as debanking, disrupted travel and insurance, and blocked routine payments for their household and work, and those effects are again in force under the reinstated listing.
- The case raises wider questions about U.S. use of extraterritorial sanctions to target U.N. experts and critics who press for International Criminal Court probes, and legal observers say the D.C. Circuit’s upcoming merits decision will shape limits on sanctions tied to speech.