Will Exxon Mobil v. CIMEX Lead to More Helms-Burton Act Claims Against Cuban State-Owned Entities?

On June 23, 2026, in a 6-3 decision in Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporación CIMEX, S.A., the Supreme Court held that the Helms-Burton Act (the Act) abrogates the foreign sovereign immunity of Cuban agencies and instrumentalities. Plaintiffs suing those entities under Title III of the Act — a 1996 law that gives U.S. nationals a private right of action against anyone who “traffics” in property the Cuban government confiscated — need not separately establish an exception to immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA).

The decision removes a jurisdictional barrier for plaintiffs that had stood in the way of Title III suits against Cuban state-owned entities. Whether it produces a wave of new litigation is less certain. Litigation is expensive, the Cuban government has few assets in the United States, and sovereign immunity remains a barrier to post-judgment execution. Those realities may temper how many of the U.S. nationals holding confiscated-property claims choose to follow Exxon’s lead.

Background

The case arises under the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (LIBERTAD Act), commonly known as the Helms-Burton Act, which Congress passed and President Clinton signed in 1996 to tighten economic pressure on Cuba’s communist government. One provision of the statute, Title III, allows U.S. nationals whose property was confiscated by the Cuban government to sue people and entities that “traffic” in that property. In addition to recovering the value of the confiscated property, plaintiffs may also seek treble damages in some instances.

For more than two decades, no such suits could proceed. From 1996 to 2019, Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump each exercised the Act’s suspension authority to hold Title III in abeyance. That changed in May 2019, when the Trump administration allowed Title III to go into effect for the first time, prompting more than 50 lawsuits, most of which have been filed against private, non-Cuban companies alleged to have used the confiscated properties in some way.

In 2019, Exxon sued two Cuban state-owned enterprises, Corporación Cimex, S.A. and Unión Cuba-Petróleo, under Title III for trafficking in service stations, oil refineries, and other facilities that the Cuban government seized in 1960 from a subsidiary of Exxon’s predecessor, Standard Oil. In 1969, the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (FCSC) certified the value of the confiscated property at more than $70 million (more than $600 million in today’s dollars). With statutory treble damages, Exxon sought more than $1 billion.

The immunity question was central from the outset. Under the FSIA, foreign states and their instrumentalities are presumptively immune from suit in the United States. To overcome this presumption, a plaintiff must demonstrate that one of the FSIA’s exceptions applies. Title III does not explicitly waive the FSIA’s grant of immunity, but it creates a right of action against any “person” who traffics in confiscated property, with “person” defined in the statute to include “any agency or instrumentality of a foreign state.”

The Cuban government-owned defendants moved to dismiss on immunity grounds. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed that Title III does not itself displace the FSIA, and a divided panel of the D.C. Circuit affirmed, holding that Title III “harmoniously coexists with the FSIA” and that plaintiffs must therefore satisfy an FSIA exception to invoke the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Judge Randolph dissented, concluding that Title III, standing alone, deprives Cuban defendants of immunity.¹

The Arguments

In the Supreme Court, Exxon argued that Title III’s text reflects clear congressional intent to abrogate the immunity of Cuban instrumentalities, principally through its definition of “person” to reach any “agency or instrumentality of a foreign state.” Exxon pointed to additional textual signals as well, including provisions assuming that suits and judgments against the Cuban government would follow, and Congress’ selective borrowing of the FSIA’s service-of-process rules. Requiring plaintiffs also to satisfy an FSIA exception, Exxon contended, would defeat Title III’s remedial purpose and block billions of dollars in legitimate claims.

The Cuban defendants countered that the FSIA is the exclusive framework for obtaining jurisdiction over foreign sovereigns in U.S. courts. In their view, Title III contains no clear statement abrogating immunity and there is no “irreconcilable conflict” between the FSIA and the Helms-Burton Act such that the latter would displace the former. They emphasized that Congress has amended the FSIA repeatedly and always expressly, yet never added a Title III exception, and that an earlier draft of Helms-Burton would have amended the FSIA to abrogate immunity, but Congress dropped that provision before enactment.

In its amicus brief supporting Exxon, the Trump administration argued that the D.C. Circuit’s decision creates an improper hurdle for Title III plaintiffs holding billions of dollars in potential claims. It warned that requiring an FSIA exception “stymies critical foreign-policy interests in promoting accountability for the Cuban government’s continuing to benefit from its illegal expropriations” and urged the Court to hold that Title III independently abrogates immunity.

Ruling

Writing for the majority, Justice Kavanaugh reversed the D.C. Circuit and held that the Helms-Burton Act itself abrogates the immunity of Cuban agencies and instrumentalities so that Title III plaintiffs suing those entities need not also satisfy an FSIA exception. In reaching that conclusion, the Court drew on its sovereign immunity precedents, including its most recent sovereign immunity ruling, Department of Agriculture Rural Development Rural Housing Service v. Kirtz, 601 U. S. 42, 55 (2024), in which it held that a waiver of sovereign immunity (to allow suits against the federal government) must be “clearly discernable from the sum total” of Congress’ work. The Court applied that same standard in Exxon to determine whether Congress had abrogated Cuba’s sovereign immunity, pointing to four aspects of the Helms-Burton Act that it viewed as collectively making clear Congress’ intention to do so.

First, the text of the Act signals congressional intent to waive immunity. Title III creates a cause of action that expressly applies to foreign agencies and instrumentalities. The Act authorizes suits against any “person” who traffics in confiscated property, and it defines “person” to include “any agency or instrumentality of a foreign state.” The Court reasoned that, under its sovereign-immunity precedents, when Congress creates a cause of action that expressly applies to sovereign entities, that formulation can abrogate immunity even without a separate waiver provision.

Second, applying the FSIA would, in effect, limit the scope of Title III’s cause of action. The only potentially relevant FSIA exceptions — the commercial activity exception and the expropriation exception — each require a plaintiff to show commercial activity in the United States or an act with direct effect in the United States. Because Helms-Burton simultaneously codified a comprehensive embargo barring most commercial dealings between Americans and Cuban entities, a Title III plaintiff could have difficulty making such a showing. The Court declined to read Congress as having created a cause of action and then rendered it a nullity.

Third, the Act’s jurisdictional structure confirms that the FSIA does not apply. Helms-Burton provides that Title III suits proceed like any other action under 28 U.S.C. § 1331, the general federal-question statute, whereas FSIA suits proceed under 28 U.S.C. § 1330, which confers jurisdiction over foreign sovereigns only where an immunity exception applies. By grounding jurisdiction in § 1331 rather than § 1330, the Court reasoned, Congress signaled that Helms-Burton suits are not FSIA actions.

Fourth, the Act gives the president plenary authority to suspend Title III suits based on national-security and foreign-policy assessments — an arrangement that echoes the pre-FSIA regime, in which the Executive Branch, not the courts, primarily decided questions of sovereign immunity. The Court found it implausible that Congress would restore that Executive Branch-centered framework while simultaneously subjecting these suits to the court-administered FSIA, particularly where the FSIA would bar nearly all of them.

Justice Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson. The dissent stressed that a cause of action and an abrogation of immunity are analytically distinct, and that Helms-Burton says nothing about immunity even though it directly amended a different part of the FSIA — the execution-immunity provisions. That silence, the dissent argued, should counsel against finding abrogation, especially given the “stringent” clear-statement standard that applies to foreign sovereign immunity. The dissent further contended that Title III’s cause of action does ample work without any abrogation, because it reaches the private parties that Congress identified as the statute’s primary target, and that plaintiffs suing Cuban instrumentalities can still proceed by satisfying an FSIA exception.

Implications

A further crack in the FSIA’s exclusivity. Exxon Mobil is the latest decision qualifying the long-held understanding that the FSIA is the sole path to overcoming foreign sovereign immunity in U.S. courts. The Court took a similar step in Türkiye Halk Bankası A.Ş. v. United States (2023), holding that the FSIA does not govern criminal prosecutions of foreign sovereigns. And in 2025, the Second Circuit held in Schansman v. Sberbank that foreign sovereigns may be sued for acts of terrorism under the Antiterrorism Act even if the FSIA’s terrorism exceptions do not apply, provided another FSIA exception applies. Exxon Mobil now recognizes an implied statutory abrogation of immunity outside the FSIA, offering courts a way to interpret stand-alone statutes as stripping immunity without amending the FSIA. In doing so, the Court continues to chip away at sovereign immunity through other, non-FSIA statutory schemes. Litigants and foreign sovereigns should expect plaintiffs to continue to seek ways to create further holes in the FSIA’s exclusive determination of exceptions to foreign sovereign immunity.

An open question for non-Cuba sovereigns. The Court expressly declined to decide whether Helms-Burton also abrogates the immunity of other sovereigns who may have trafficked in confiscated Cuban property.

That reservation is significant. As the dissent noted, Title III’s cause of action reaches non-Cuban and Cuban instrumentalities alike, so the majority’s logic does not obviously stop at Cuba. Third-country state-owned enterprises doing business in Cuba now face real uncertainty about their exposure.

Winning a judgment is not the same as collecting on it. As Justice Kagan emphasized in her dissent, jurisdictional immunity and execution immunity are separate questions. Even a plaintiff who obtains a Title III judgment against a Cuban instrumentality must still satisfy an FSIA execution-immunity exception to attach sovereign assets in the United States. For that reason, Exxon Mobil lowers the barrier to entering the courthouse but does not ensure recovery, and plaintiffs will not escape the FSIA completely. The majority suggested, however, that a judgment against Cuba may still hold value, even if a plaintiff cannot immediately collect on that judgment — future changes in the law may increase the prospects of collection, and the judgments could act as leverage for the United States in its relations with Cuba.

A win for the administration’s Cuba policy. The decision advances the Trump administration’s foreign policy towards Cuba. The administration’s aggressive rhetoric towards Cuba has been increasingly frequent and direct in the months preceding the Exxon Mobil decision, and the expanded number of claims against the Cuban government under the Helms-Burton Act will only serve to advance President Trump’s adversarial stance toward the communist nation.

A new avenue for plaintiffs — with limits. Though the Exxon Mobil decision opens the door to more suits against Cuban government agencies and instrumentalities, it remains to be seen how many new plaintiffs will jump at this opportunity. While there are over 5,000 holders of FCSC claims, only a tiny fraction have opted to sue Cuban state-owned entities. Instead, most suits have been against American companies with commercial ties to Cuba. Unlike private entities, Cuba lacks substantial resources with which to pay judgments. And as noted above, even if judgments are obtained, plaintiffs must overcome the continuing immunity of sovereign assets from post-judgment attachment.

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Arnold & Porter can advise companies on how to navigate these recent developments. We regularly counsel U.S. and foreign companies and foreign sovereigns on foreign sovereign immunities issues. Companies seeking guidance on these issues should contact the authors of this Advisory or their usual Arnold & Porter contact.

© Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP 2026 All Rights Reserved. This Advisory is intended to be a general summary of the law and does not constitute legal advice. You should consult with counsel to determine applicable legal requirements in a specific fact situation.