The justices considered the scope of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which allows U.S. companies to sue over property confiscated by Cuba.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8–1 on May 21 that a U.S. company should be able to sue cruise lines for using its business assets that Cuba’s communist government seized decades ago.
The case is Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, which the justices heard on Feb. 23.
The case focuses 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, which is involved in a separate case at the Supreme Court, sued the same day.
In the Havana Docks case, a Delaware-based company argued cruise lines should have to compensate it for using the docks it built and had a 99-year concession to operate that 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’ 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.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the high court’s majority opinion.
The lower court erred when it ruled that the cruise lines were not liable because Havana Docks’ property interest in the docks would have expired before 2016 if the Cuban Government had not confiscated the docks, Thomas said.
“Havana Docks had to prove only that the cruise lines used confiscated property—such as the docks—to which Havana Docks owns a claim,” the justice said, adding that the Supreme Court is vacating the 11th Circuit’s decision.
Justice Elena Kagan dissented.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
