On May 21, 2026, soon after the 30th anniversary of the enactment of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996,[i] and just one day after the United States indicted Raúl Castro for “the very incident that prompted passage”[ii] of the Act, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd.[iii] In an 8–1 decision, the Court issued its “first-ever opinion interpreting Title III”[iv] of the LIBERTAD Act (also known as the Helms-Burton Act),[v] holding that the four defendant cruise lines “used confiscated property to which Havana Docks owns the claim.”[vi] Havana Docks is one of the seminal decisions that has come downsince 2019, when the Trump administration allowed Title III of the statute to be activated after decades of its suspension.[vii] While this was the most controversial provision of the act,[viii] recent decisions such as Havana Docks have seemingly dispelled many of the initial fears which dominated the global discourse on the subject.
The birth of the LIBERTAD Act was met with panic, causing an “international uproar,”[ix] although it may seem timid viewed in light of the current foreign affairs landscape.[x] The intent behind the 1996 statute, and Title III in particular, was “to chill foreign investment in the Cuban economy . . . hastening the day that economic desperation and isolation cause the Castro regime to collapse.”[xi] This justification in itself is evidence of the potentially unlawful nature of this provision. Yet in service of this mission, Title III “creates a federal cause of action, on behalf of U.S. citizens whose property was confiscated without compensation by Cuba, against those who ‘traffic’ in that property[,]”[xii] making it pertinent to promote Congress’s goals, but also making it a particularly unfavorable measure for nearly any party who has done business with Cuba in the last 60 years.
While President Clinton initially indicated he would “veto the Helms-Burton bill if it reached his desk,” his stance quickly flipped in response to Fidel Castro launching missiles into planes flown by a Cuban-American organization based in Florida, Hermanos al Rescate, on February 24, 1996.[xiii] Moving forward with the enactment, President Clinton faced an onslaught of resistance “among United States’ allies due to the extraterritorial reach of Title III,”[xiv] including retaliatory legislation and blocking statutes passed by crucial partners, including Canada, Mexico and the European Union.[xv] These sentiments persisted even though President Clinton negotiated a provision which allowed the President to suspend Title III every six months if “the suspension ‘[i] is necessary to the national interests of the United States and [ii] will expedite a transition to democracy in Cuba.’”[xvi] The executive branch requested this compromise “in order to afford the President flexibility to respond to unfolding developments in Cuba.”[xvii] Every subsequent U.S. President continued to extend the suspension,[xviii] but the anti-Title III hysteria experienced a second wind when the Trump administration allowed the suspension to expire in 2019, a decision which remained in effect during the Biden administration,[xix] and continues to this day.
Title III fueled fears of hypothetically infinitesimal claims being filed and, more contentiously, the imposition of “United States policy on third countries . . . .”[xx] What has occurred in the last seven years has proven much of the international paranoia regarding Title III to be moot, setting aside the devastating collective effect of U.S. policy as a whole on Cuba.[xxi] When this announcement was made in 2019, experts predicted that the opening of the proverbial floodgates would generate “hundreds of thousands of lawsuits”;[xxii] however, compared to that estimate, the number filed since then has been extremely low.[xxiii] This has primarily been due to the procedural difficulties of suing foreign companies, which have had the unintended consequence of encouraging plaintiffs to sue American defendants,[xxiv] also exemplified by the Havana Docks decision. Following the lifted suspension, scholars referred to these outcomes as evidence of Title III “backfiring”[xxv] by targeting U.S. defendants rather than foreign entities, since this contradicts Congress’s intention of enforcing the problematic extraterritorial reach under the statute.[xxvi] However, viewed in a contemporary light, this conclusion largely falls flat. The “unforeseen targeting of domestic companies”[xxvii] which has unfolded is apparently not a prime national concern. Requiring U.S.-based behemoths like Royal Caribbean and Carnival to compensate plaintiffs victimized by the Castro regime, rather than enforcing inflammatory judgments against our allies – already much-aggrieved as of late – may be viewed as a better-case scenario in the long run.
Madison Haymes is a staff member of Fordham International Law Journal Volume L.
[i] Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996, 22 U.S.C. §§ 6021–6091.
[ii] William S. Dodge, Supreme Court Permits Claims Against Cruise Lines for Using Cuban Docks, Transnat’l Litig. Blog, (May 26, 2026), https://tlblog.org/supreme-court-permits-claims-against-cruise-lines-for-using-cuban-docks/.
[iii] Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., 608 U.S. 235 (2026).
[iv] Antonio Canales et al., U.S. Supreme Court Revives Trafficking Claims in First-Ever Helms-Burton Decision, Jones Day (June 2026), https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2026/06/us-supreme-court-revives-trafficking-claims-in-firstever-helmsburton-decision.
[v] Brice M. Clagett, Title III of the Helms-Burton Act is Consistent with International Law, 90 Am. J. Int’l L. 434, 434 (1996).
[vi] Havana Docks, 608 U.S. at 253.
[vii] See Gergana S. Sivrieva, The Helms-Burton Act Backfires: Surprising Litigation Trends Following Title III’s Long-Feared Activation, 42 N. Ill. U. L. Rev. 1, 11–12 (2021).
[viii] See id. at 8.
[ix] Havana Docks Corp. v. Carnival Corp., 592 F. Supp. 3d 1088, 1181 (S.D. Fla. 2022).
[x] See, e.g., Chris Cameron, Trump Officials Impose More Sanctions to Pressure Cuba, N.Y. Times (Aug. 20, 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/20/us/politics/trump-cuba-sanctions.html.
[xi] Ralph G. Steinhardt, Foreword: Helms-Burton and the Virtues of a Good Course in Pathology, 30 Geo. Wash. J. Int’l L. & Econ. 201, 201–02 (1996).
[xii] Brice M. Clagett, The Controversy over Title III of the Helms-Burton Act: Who is Breaking International Law, 30 Geo. Wash. J. Int’l L. & Econ. 271, 272 (1996).
[xiii] Andreas F. Lowenfeld, Congress and Cuba: The Helms-Burton Act, 90 Am. J. Int’l L. 419, 419 n.6 (1996).
[xiv] Havana Docks, 592 F. Supp. 3d at 1181.
[xv] Sivrieva, supra note vii, at 10.
[xvi] Lowenfeld, supra note xiii, at 426.
[xvii] Id.
[xviii] See Havana Docks, 608 U.S. at 243.
[xix] See Ernesto Domínguez López, Ariadna Cornelio Hitchman & Seida Barrera Rodríguez, The Activation of the Title III of the Helms-Burton Act: The Making of a Policy, 17 Int’l J. Cuban Stud. 44, 65 (2025).
[xx] Lowenfeld, supra note xiii, at 431; See also Judith Alison Lee et al., President Trump Ramps Up Cuba Sanctions Changes — Allows Litigation Against Non-U.S. Companies Conducting Business in Cuba,Gibson Dunn (May 1, 2019), https://www.gibsondunn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/president-trump-ramps-up-cuba-sanctions-allows-litigation-against-non-us-companies-conducting-business-in-cuba.pdf.
[xxi] All Things Considered: How the U.S. Oil Blockade is Taking a High Toll on Everyday Cubans (NPR radio broadcast, aired Mar. 21, 2026), https://www.npr.org/2026/03/21/nx-s1-5753802/how-the-u-s-oil-blockade-is-taking-a-high-toll-on-everyday-cubans.
[xxii] Sivrieva, supra note vii, at 32.
[xxiii] See, e.g., Sivrieva, supra note vii, at 36.
[xxiv] See John B. Bellinger, III et al., The Helms-Burton Act’s Unexpected Boomerang Effect: Most Lawsuits Have Targeted US Companies,Arnold & Porter (Mar. 3, 2020), https://www.arnoldporter.com/en/perspectives/advisories/2020/03/the-helms-burton-acts.
[xxv] See, e.g., William S. Dodge & Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk, More Evidence that Helms-Burton is Backfiring, Transnat’l Litig. Blog, (Sep. 7, 2022), https://tlblog.org/more-evidence-that-helms-burton-is-backfiring/; See also Sivrieva, supra note vii.
[xxvi] See Steinhardt, supra note xi.
[xxvii] Sivrieva, supra note vii at 37.
This is a student blog post and in no way represents the views of the Fordham International Law Journal.