By John Fritze, CNN
(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed Exxon Mobil to sue state-owned oil companies in Cuba over the confiscation of property that occurred after Fidel Castro’s regime seized power nearly seven decades ago, letting the lawsuit proceed at a time when President Donald Trump has taken an aggressive stance toward Havana.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion for a 6-3 majority with the liberal justices in dissent.
The decision is the latest development in an unusual confluence of legal and geopolitical moves Washington has taken to increase pressure on Cuba. The Trump administration indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro on May 20 on charges that stem from his alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of two civilian aircraft that killed four people, including three Americans. Trump has also flirted with military action in Cuba, telling reporters in March he might have the “honor of taking Cuba.”
A day after the Castro indictment, the Supreme Court decided another case dealing with property seized by Cuba. In that decision, an 8-1 court allowed a lawsuit to proceed against the world’s largest cruise ship operators that had docked at Havana’s pier amid a thawing of relations during the Obama administration.
The Exxon case was also tied to property confiscated in 1960 shortly after Castro came to power in the island nation’s revolution and to a law Congress passed in 1996 allowing US nationals to sue over that seized property in US courts.
By the late 1950s, Standard Oil Company – later renamed Exxon Mobil Corporation – had extensive operations in Cuba, including a refinery, multiple product terminals and 117 service stations, all of which were seized by the Castro government and folded into state-owned enterprises.
An American commission in 1969 certified Standard Oil’s loss at nearly $72 million. With interest and Exxon’s request for triple damages, hundreds of millions of dollars may be at stake.
The case involving Exxon dealt with how the 1996 law interacts with another federal law that generally bars Americans from suing foreign governments in US courts. Exxon said Congress effectively supplanted that other law when it passed the 1996 act, but the Cuban-owned companies said they should be shielded from the litigation.
Congress and the federal judiciary have generally been hesitant to allow lawsuits against foreign governments in domestic courts in part out of fear that foreign governments would respond by clearing the way for similar lawsuits filed abroad against the United States. Last year, in a separate case, a unanimous court ruled that the families of victims of terrorist attacks in Israel could sue the Palestinian Authority in US courts.
The Trump administration backed Exxon in the litigation.
“The United States has compelling foreign-policy interests in ensuring that US nationals whose assets were illegally expropriated by Fidel Castro’s communist regime receive recompense and in preventing the Cuban government from further benefiting from its wrongdoing,” the Department of Justice told the court.
In the Exxon case, lower courts handed down mixed rulings, but the DC Circuit rejected the company’s argument that the 1996 law offered a clear path for its lawsuit.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
