The Supreme Court on Feb. 23 grappled with two cases about U.S. business assets that Cuba’s communist government seized decades ago.

The cases are Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises and Exxon Mobil v. Corporacion Cimex, which the justices heard back-to-back in more than three hours of oral arguments.

Both cases focus on the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, created to pressure Cuba by penalizing companies “trafficking” in property Cuba seized from U.S. interests. Also known as the Helms-Burton Act, the law allows U.S. citizens and companies to sue any person who traffics in, uses, or profits from the confiscated property.

Cuba’s late dictator Fidel Castro overthrew the former government in 1959 and turned Cuba into a one-party state in which socialist policies were implemented, including nationalization of assets of foreign businesses.

Parties had been unable to sue Cuban government-owned enterprises under the act because U.S. President Bill Clinton suspended Title III, the part of the law allowing compensation lawsuits to be filed. President Donald Trump revoked the suspension on May 2, 2019, and Exxon Mobil sued the same day.

In the Havana Docks case, a Delaware-based company argues cruise lines should have to compensate it for using the docks it built and had a 99-year concession to operate, which Cuba’s revolutionary government confiscated without compensation in 1960. The concession had 44 years left to run, according to the company.

The cruise lines used the docks after the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission certified Havana Docks’s claim against Cuba, disembarking almost one million tourists on the docks from 2015 to 2019, and paying Cuba at least $130 million and earning more than $1 billion from their Cuban cruises, the company’s petition said.

In 2024, a divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit overturned a more than $100 million judgment against several cruise lines for “trafficking” in confiscated property by using expropriated docks in Cuba. That court held the company’s property interest in the docks expired in 2004.

In the Exxon Mobil case, the company, which was previously known as Standard Oil Co., seeks compensation from three Cuban government-owned companies for energy assets seized in 1960.

In 2024, a divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that a separate federal statute presents an additional hurdle for lawsuits against Cuban entities. That court held that Title III claims may proceed against Cuban entities only if the lawsuit falls under an exception in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. That act generally forbids lawsuits against foreign governments, but allows suits involving commercial activities or property seized in violation of international law.

The appeals court ruled that when the district court considered the case, it failed to properly analyze whether the commercial activities exception applied, and sent the case back to that court for further consideration.

Oral Arguments

During oral arguments Feb. 23, Havana Docks attorney Richard Klingler said his client’s claim ends when it is resolved or Cuba becomes a democracy, not on the date its interest in the docks was terminated.

The 11th Circuit “shrunk Title III” when it acted as if no confiscation had taken place, he said.

Klingler said the company was entitled to the reasonable value of its leasehold interest at the time of confiscation, as well as interest until payment is received.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the claim’s open-endedness may have troubled the 11th Circuit.

“I don’t know what entitles you to ad nauseam compensation for use by everyone forever,” the justice said.

Klingler said there is no due process-related problem with the company’s claim because Congress barred such claims by defining what confiscated property was.

Sotomayor said even if that’s true, there is still an excessive fines problem under the Eighth Amendment.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the Helms-Burton Act authorizes anyone with a property interest certified by the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission to “make a claim that someone is trafficking in it and get relief or … money that is associated with that activity.”

“It seems pretty straightforward to me,” Jackson added.

Addressing U.S. Justice Department attorney Aimee Brown, Justice Clarence Thomas questioned how far the federal government could go to discourage investment in Cuba. The Trump administration supported the company’s position at the hearing.

“Is there any limit to how far Congress can go with this sort of poison pill remedy?” he said.

Paul Clement, attorney for the cruise lines, said his clients can’t be held liable because the Havana Docks Corporation’s concession expired in 2004.

“Someone who arrives later is not in a position to traffic in … the property interest that was confiscated,” he said.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett called the confiscated assets “kryptonite,” saying that when Castro took them, “for purposes of trafficking, nobody can touch it.”

Exxon Mobil attorney Morgan Ratner said that when Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act, it wanted “to put crushing diplomatic and economic pressure on the Cuban government,” and it abrogated the foreign sovereign immunity the Cuban entities would normally have enjoyed.

Foreign sovereign immunity is a legal doctrine that prevents governments from being sued unless they agree to be sued. Abrogation is the act of formally annulling a law or legal provision.

Congress authorized lawsuits against Cuban instrumentalities and “codified an incredibly restrictive embargo cutting off commerce between the United States and Cuba,” she said.

“That combination makes no sense if Congress had intended to rely on [Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act] exceptions that depend on commercial activity,” Ratner said.

Justice Samuel Alito said that unless the Cuban entities have property in the United States that may be taken to satisfy a judgment, “what difference does all of this make as a practical matter?”

Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Curtis Gannon, who argued in support of Exxon, said there was still value in obtaining a judgment because “it could be taken to courts in other countries.”

Jules Lobel, attorney for Corporacion Cimex, said the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act makes foreign state instrumentalities immune in U.S. courts unless one of the exceptions in the law is met.

“Nothing in Title III’s text abrogates that immunity,” he said.

Lobel said Congress declined to create another exception to immunity, and this court “should not read in an exception where Congress did not enact one.”

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh said Congress gave the president a role in deciding whether to permit lawsuits under Title III, allowing him to consider the immunity of foreign entities.

“It seems like it would be odd to put the president front and center” in the process if lawsuits could still be disallowed under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Kavanaugh said.

“The president is the person in our constitutional structure who can weigh all that as to Cuba,” the justice added.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the cases by the end of June.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Feb. 23, 2026, in The Epoch Times.