## Facts

- Global Relief Foundation, Inc. (GRF) was an Illinois-based, tax-exempt Islamic charity raising funds for humanitarian projects domestically and abroad.
- Federal agencies suspected GRF was connected to, or financially supporting, terrorist organizations associated with al-Qaeda.
- In December 2001, federal agents executed a search warrant at GRF’s offices and seized documents and computer records.
- The same day, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), acting under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and terrorism-related executive orders issued under a declared national emergency, blocked GRF’s property and interests in property.
- OFAC initially imposed a provisional block and later designated GRF as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT); the freeze occurred before any adversarial adjudication.
- GRF alleged the freeze prevented it from paying staff and operating, effectively destroying the organization without prior notice or hearing.
- GRF sued federal officials and agencies seeking a preliminary injunction lifting the block, along with constitutional and statutory relief related to the freeze and the search.
- The district court denied preliminary injunctive relief, and GRF appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether IEEPA and related executive orders authorized blocking a domestic charity’s assets based on foreign-affairs and national-security concerns, including whether “any interest” requires a foreign legal interest in the blocked property.
2. Whether the asset freeze and designation without pre-deprivation notice and hearing, including reliance on classified or ex parte submissions, likely violated procedural due process.
3. Whether GRF showed a likelihood of success on claims that the search and seizure violated the Fourth Amendment in a posture supporting preliminary injunctive relief.
4. Whether the blocking order and designation likely violated GRF’s First Amendment rights where the burden on speech, association, or religious exercise was incidental to economic sanctions.
5. Whether GRF satisfied the requirements for a preliminary injunction given the asserted harms and the government’s national-security interests.

## Decision

- The court of appeals affirmed the denial of a preliminary injunction.
- IEEPA’s “any interest” language was read broadly; a foreign interest need not be limited to a formal legal interest, and blocking could extend to a domestic entity’s assets where foreign terrorists may have an interest or use the entity as a conduit.
- GRF did not show a sufficient likelihood of success on its due process challenge; immediate blocking could occur without a prior hearing in the national-security setting, and post-deprivation avenues to contest the action were significant.
- The court held that due process did not require disclosure of classified information to the targeted organization at the preliminary-injunction stage; ex parte and in camera submissions could be permissible to protect sources and methods.
- GRF did not demonstrate a strong likelihood of success on Fourth Amendment claims on the limited record; the search was conducted under a warrant issued upon probable cause, and suppression-type disputes were not suited to resolution through preliminary injunctive relief in this posture.
- The First Amendment challenge was unlikely to succeed because the measures were economic sanctions aimed at preventing terrorism financing, not direct regulation of expression; any expressive burden was treated as incidental.
- The balance of harms and public interest weighed strongly against interim relief because of the risk that unblocked funds could support terrorism and the deference owed to executive judgments in foreign affairs and national security.

## Legal Principles

- Under IEEPA, authority to block “any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest” is construed expansively and may reach a domestic entity’s assets when a foreign terrorist interest is plausible.
- In national-security asset-blocking, the Constitution does not necessarily require pre-deprivation notice and hearing; post-deprivation procedures may satisfy due process where immediate action is justified.
- Due process may permit reliance on classified information and ex parte, in camera submissions in terrorism-related blocking actions, especially at an interim-relief stage.
- Economic sanctions that incidentally burden speech, association, or religious activity are less likely to violate the First Amendment when justified by counterterrorism objectives and not aimed at suppressing expression.
- Preliminary injunctions are extraordinary relief; in terrorism-financing cases, courts give substantial weight to the public interest in national security and defer to executive factfinding and predictive judgments.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit refused to preliminarily enjoin OFAC’s IEEPA-based freeze of a domestic charity’s assets, holding that GRF had not shown a likelihood of success on its statutory and constitutional claims and that national-security interests and executive deference outweighed GRF’s asserted interim harms.


Global Relief Found., Inc. v. O'Neill, 315 F.3d 748 (7th Cir. 2002)