US Supreme Court opens the courthouse door to lawsuits tied to Cuba’s property seizures 6 decades after the fact

I am a law professor who teaches international and comparative law with a focus on Latin America, and I study transnational dispute resolution. Although the Supreme Court has now confirmed that Americans can sue Cuban state-owned companies in U.S. courts, I think it’s worth observing that winning a lawsuit and collecting on it are two different things.

Helms-Burton loophole

This was the second of two decisions regarding U.S. property rights in Cuba that the court decided in the 2025-2026 term.

That they were heard at all might be surprising because the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a 1976 law, generally shields foreign governments and their entities from lawsuits in U.S. courts. There are few exceptions.

These Supreme Court cases were belatedly allowed to proceed due to a 1996 law, the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act. Congress passed it after the Cuban government shot down civilian planes flown by members of the Brothers to the Rescue group, killing three U.S. citizens and one permanent resident.

Widely known as the Helms-Burton Act, the law made resolving property claims a condition for restoring full economic and diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba.

But the provision allowing lawsuits in federal courts over the use of assets the Cuban government had seized was never activated until President Donald Trump took that step in 2019, during his first term. While other cases have been filed since then, the Supreme Court has only now weighed in on the legitimacy of these claims.

Fittingly, both cases were argued on the same day in February 2026.

The court also held in its 8-1 ruling on the other case, which was handed down on May 21, 2026, that cruise lines that docked at Havana’s ports could be held liable under Helms-Burton. The majority found that the cruise lines were trafficking in property confiscated from the American owner of a docks company decades earlier.

Long time claiming

Standard Oil operated a refinery, terminals, packaging plants and more than a hundred service stations throughout Cuba before Castro took power in 1959. When Cuba’s government expropriated those assets in 1960, it transferred them to two Cuban state-owned companies, Union Cuba-Petróleo and Cimex. Both are operating today.

A U.S. commission certified in 1969 that Exxon’s losses exceeded US$70 million. Including decades of interest and the damages that Helms-Burton allows, those losses are worth more than $1 billion now.

The Exxon case hinged on a seemingly technical question with big consequences, both for U.S. expropriated assets in Cuba and for the question of whether Cuban state-owned companies or government agencies can be sued in U.S. courts.

Two lower courts agreed with lawyers for the two Cuban companies that the suit should be dismissed. Exxon argued that the Helms-Burton Act itself stripped Cuban state-owned companies of their immunity from U.S. litigation – and a majority of the Supreme Court justices agreed.

4-point reasoning

The majority’s reasoning rested on four interlocking points.

First, Helms-Burton explicitly says lawsuits can be brought against foreign government agencies and state-owned companies, which the court read as a waiver of their immunity to suit – even without a separate provision saying so in those words.

Second, requiring Exxon to satisfy one of the exceptions allowed under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act would render Helms-Burton toothless. The relevant exceptions demand proof that the Cuban entities engaged in commercial activity connected to the United States or that confiscated property ended up being used commercially there.

But Helms-Burton codified the economic embargo against Cuba that prohibits trade between the U.S. and Cuba. Reading both laws the way the Cuban plaintiff suggested would make them cancel each other out. Congress, the court’s majority concluded, “does not ordinarily enact self-defeating statutes,” or “‘authorize a suit against a sovereign with one hand, only to bar it with the other.’”

Third, the act sends cases to federal court under the general civil jurisdiction statute, not under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act’s own jurisdictional framework – a deliberate drafting choice the court read as placing Helms-Burton suits outside the act’s reach.

Finally, because Helms-Burton gave presidents power to block these suits, the majority concluded that this mechanism substitutes for the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act rather than coexisting with it. After the president has allowed suits to go forward, the court held, “there is no additional FSIA hurdle that a plaintiff must clear in order to sue Cuban agencies or instrumentalities.”

Dissent: Congress did not clearly waive immunity

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, disagreed.

The dissent argued that the Helms-Burton Act never clearly waived the Cuban companies’ immunity to suit in the first place, and that Congress, by deliberately dropping an explicit immunity waiver from an earlier draft of the law, signaled it did not intend to do so.

Kagan also raised a practical concern that is likely to shape the litigation ahead: Even with the courthouse door now open, plaintiffs like Exxon may face further obstacles when they try to collect on any judgment they win, since separate provisions of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act protecting foreign state assets from enforcement may still apply.

This decision will prove significant for any future claimant in a situation that is similar to Exxon’s. There are nearly 6,000 U.S. citizens and companies who have filed or inherited certified claims against Cuba for their losses in the 1960s. Those claims totaled an estimated $1.9 billion back then.

The related Supreme Court ruling, Havana Docks Corp. v Royal Caribbean, et al., opened the door for claims against private companies that profited from confiscated property in Cuba. Exxon v. Cimex opens that same door for claims against Cuban state-owned companies that hold that property.

Helms-Burton is, three decades after its enactment, fully operative against both categories of defendants, at least where Cuban entities are concerned. That’s true even if Cuba itself is bankrupt and the same presidential authority the court relied on to open the courthouse door can close it again at any time.

I expect these rulings to matter not as a path to money recovery, but as leverage in whatever negotiations over property rights eventually accompany a future normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Manuel A. Gómez, Florida International University

Read more:

• Trump administration pledges 0M in aid for Cuba, but only if Catholic or other faith‑based groups distribute it
• Cuba needs a long‑term solution to its energy crisis
• Cuba’s speedboat shootout recalls long history of exile groups engaged in covert ops aimed at regime change

Manuel A. Gómez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.