WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court is set to explore legal questions arising from the fraught history of US-Cuban relations when it considers the scope of a 1996 law that lets US nationals seek compensation for property confiscated by the communist-led Cuban government.
The justices hear arguments on Monday in two cases centered on the federal law called the Helms-Burton Act, one involving US oil major ExxonMobil and the other involving the cruise lines Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian Cruise Line and MSC Cruises. One of the law’s provisions, called Title III, allows for lawsuits in US courts against entities that “traffic” in property confiscated by the Cuban government after the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959.
While the two cases focus on distinct legal issues, both raise the question of just how powerful a remedy Congress intended Title III to be. In both cases, the Supreme Court has the opportunity to eliminate barriers that claimants face in bringing Helms-Burton Act lawsuits.
The justices have never before interpreted Title III, which Congress authorized the US president to suspend if deemed “necessary to the national interests of the United States.” Title III was long dormant due to presidential decisions to suspend it. But President Donald Trump, who has taken a hard line toward Cuba, lifted that suspension during his first term in office, unleashing a wave of about 40 lawsuits filed in 2019 and 2020 that have slowly made their way through the courts. Trump’s administration has declared Cuba “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security, cutting off the flow of Venezuelan oil to the Caribbean island nation and threatening to slap tariffs on any country supplying it with fuel.
