Cuba’s economic system is collapsing, and its govt property in the US stay in large part frozen. However U.S. companies have a proper to hunt reimbursement from property the Cuban govt seized from American corporations greater than six a long time in the past, the U.S. Very best Court docket dominated on June 23, 2026.
In Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporación Cimex, a majority of six justices dominated that the oil and gasoline large may just sue Cuban govt companies and state-owned corporations for working a refinery, terminals and gasoline stations that Fidel Castro’s regime took from its predecessor, Usual Oil, in 1960.
I’m a legislation professor who teaches global and comparative legislation with a focal point on Latin The us, and I find out about transnational dispute solution. Even if the Very best Court docket has now showed that American citizens can sue Cuban state-owned corporations in U.S. courts, I feel it’s value gazing that profitable a lawsuit and amassing on it are two various things.
Helms-Burton loophole
This was once the second one of 2 choices relating to U.S. belongings rights in Cuba that the court docket made up our minds within the 2025-2026 time period.
That they have been heard in any respect could be sudden for the reason that International Sovereign Immunities Act, a 1976 legislation, normally shields international governments and their entities from court cases in U.S. courts. There are few exceptions.
Those Very best Court docket instances have been belatedly allowed to continue because of a 1996 legislation, the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Harmony Act. Congress handed it after the Cuban govt shot down civilian planes flown via contributors of the Brothers to the Rescue staff, killing 3 U.S. voters and one everlasting resident.
Extensively referred to as the Helms-Burton Act, the legislation made resolving belongings claims a situation for restoring complete financial and diplomatic members of the family between the U.S. and Cuba.
However the provision permitting court cases in federal courts over using property the Cuban govt had seized was once by no means activated till President Donald Trump took that step in 2019, right through his first time period. Whilst different instances were filed since then, the Very best Court docket has most effective now weighed in at the legitimacy of those claims.
Fittingly, each instances have been argued at the identical day in February 2026.
The court docket additionally held in its 8-1 ruling at the different case, which was once passed down on Would possibly 21, 2026, that cruise traces that docked at Havana’s ports might be held liable below Helms-Burton. The bulk discovered that the cruise traces have been trafficking in belongings confiscated from the American proprietor of a docks corporate a long time previous.
The primary cruise send to commute from the U.S. to Cuba in a long time, a vessel from the Carnival Cruise’s Fathom line, lands in Havana in 2016.
Adalberto Roque/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
Very long time claiming
Usual Oil operated a refinery, terminals, packaging vegetation and greater than 100 carrier stations all the way through Cuba prior to Castro took energy in 1959. When Cuba’s govt expropriated the ones property in 1960, it transferred them to 2 Cuban state-owned corporations, Union Cuba-Petróleo and Cimex. Each are working nowadays.
A U.S. fee qualified in 1969 that Exxon’s losses exceeded US$70 million. Together with a long time of passion and the damages that Helms-Burton permits, the ones losses are value greater than $1 billion now.
The Exxon case hinged on a apparently technical query with large penalties, each for U.S. expropriated property in Cuba and for the query of whether or not Cuban state-owned corporations or govt companies will also be sued in U.S. courts.
Two decrease courts agreed with attorneys for the 2 Cuban corporations that the swimsuit must be brushed aside. Exxon argued that the Helms-Burton Act itself stripped Cuban state-owned corporations in their immunity from U.S. litigation – and a majority of the Very best Court docket justices agreed.
With gasoline a scarce commodity in Cuba, lots of its gasoline stations, like this one noticed in Matanzas on Would possibly 30, 2026, not have shoppers filling up their tanks.
Magdalena Chodownik/Anadolu by way of Getty Photographs
4-point reasoning
The bulk’s reasoning rested on 4 interlocking issues.
First, Helms-Burton explicitly says court cases will also be introduced in opposition to international govt companies and state-owned corporations, which the court docket learn as a waiver in their immunity to fit – even with no separate provision pronouncing so in the ones phrases.
2nd, requiring Exxon to fulfill probably the most exceptions allowed below the International Sovereign Immunities Act would render Helms-Burton toothless. The related exceptions call for evidence that the Cuban entities engaged in business task hooked up to the US or that confiscated belongings ended up getting used commercially there.
However Helms-Burton codified the commercial embargo in opposition to Cuba that prohibits business between the U.S. and Cuba. Studying each regulations the best way the Cuban plaintiff recommended would cause them to cancel each and every different out. Congress, the court docket’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.’”
3rd, the act sends instances to federal court docket below the overall civil jurisdiction statute, now not below the International Sovereign Immunities Act’s personal jurisdictional framework – a planned drafting selection the court docket learn as hanging Helms-Burton fits outdoor the act’s succeed in.
After all, as a result of Helms-Burton gave presidents energy to dam those fits, the bulk concluded that this mechanism substitutes for the International Sovereign Immunities Act slightly than coexisting with it. After the president has allowed fits to move ahead, the court docket held, “there is no additional FSIA hurdle that a plaintiff must clear in order to sue Cuban agencies or instrumentalities.”
Legal professional Rodney Margol, middle, speaks right through a 2019 information convention in Miami about his purchasers’ lawsuit in opposition to Carnival Cruise Line over its use of Cuban docks that his purchasers say belong to their corporate, Havana Docks.
AP Photograph/Wilfredo Lee
Dissent: Congress didn’t obviously waive immunity
Justice Elena Kagan, joined via Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, disagreed.
The dissent argued that the Helms-Burton Act by no means obviously waived the Cuban corporations’ immunity to fit within the first position, and that Congress, via intentionally losing an specific immunity waiver from an previous draft of the legislation, signaled it didn’t intend to take action.
Kagan additionally raised a realistic fear this is more likely to form the litigation forward: Even with the courthouse door now open, plaintiffs like Exxon would possibly face additional hindrances when they are attempting to gather on any judgment they win, since separate provisions of the International Sovereign Immunities Act protective international state property from enforcement would possibly nonetheless observe.
This choice will end up important for any long term claimant in a state of affairs this is very similar to Exxon’s. There are just about 6,000 U.S. voters and firms who’ve filed or inherited qualified claims in opposition to Cuba for his or her losses within the Sixties. The ones claims totaled an estimated $1.9 billion again then.
The comparable Very best Court docket ruling, Havana Docks Corp. v Royal Caribbean, et al., opened the door for claims in opposition to personal corporations that profited from confiscated belongings in Cuba. Exxon v. Cimex opens that very same door for claims in opposition to Cuban state-owned corporations that dangle that belongings.
Helms-Burton is, 3 a long time after its enactment, absolutely operative in opposition to each classes of defendants, a minimum of the place Cuban entities are involved. That’s true despite the fact that Cuba itself is bankrupt and the similar presidential authority the court docket relied directly to open the courthouse door can shut it once more at any time.
I be expecting those rulings to subject now not as a trail to cash restoration, however as leverage in no matter negotiations over belongings rights in the end accompany a long term normalization of U.S.-Cuba members of the family.
