(The Hill) The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a pair of cases involving Exxon and major cruise lines that could ease the ability of U.S. companies to seek compensation for property confiscated by the Castro regime in Cuba. 

Congress created a pathway for such lawsuits nearly three decades ago but allowed presidents to suspend it. Each president did so until President Trump enabled cases to commence during his first term. 

Now in his second term, the justices asked for the Trump’s administration’s input on whether they should take up two of the cases that had reached the high court. Trump’s Justice Department urged the court to do so, and it wants the justices to ultimately rule it should be easier for the lawsuits to proceed. 

“This is the most important case involving U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba to reach this Court in the past sixty years,” one of the companies seeking compensation wrote in its Supreme Court petition. 

The cases are set to be heard during the court’s upcoming term, with decisions expected by next summer. 

In the first, Exxon is suing Cuban state-owned companies. In the other, the company that built and operated the piers at Havana’s port is seeking to reinstate a $440 million award it won against some of the world’s biggest cruise lines. 

The cases present distinct legal questions, but both concern the scope of the Helms-Burton Act, which Congress passed in 1996 to strengthen the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Its passage was spurred by the Cuban Air Force shooting down two unarmed civilian planes. 

The law includes a provision enabling U.S. nationals to file lawsuits against anyone who “traffics” in property confiscated by the Cuban government after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. 

Exxon sued CIMEX and UnionCuba Petroleo, both Cuban state-owned enterprises, over the Castro regime’s confiscation of an oil refinery and more than 100 service stations owned by a subsidiary of Exxon, which was then known as Standard Oil. A U.S. commission later certified the company’s losses totaled roughly $71.6 million. 

Exxon pleaded with the justices to review a lower court holding that its lawsuit can only proceed if it also meets an exception under a separate federal law that grants foreign sovereigns broad legal immunity in U.S. courts. Exxon argues the specific pathway laid out in the Helms-Burton Act supersedes those general rules. 

“That erroneous holding impedes private suits against Cuban agencies and instrumentalities and stymies important foreign-policy interests in holding the Cuban government accountable for continuing to benefit from its illegal expropriations,” the Justice Department wrote in support of Exxon’s petition. 

The state-owned companies urged the justices to turn away the appeal, writing that “the Court has repeatedly warned of the fallacies and perils of this approach to statutory interpretation.” 
 

The Supreme Court will hear the case alongside a lawsuit against some of the world’s biggest cruise lines. 

Havana Docks Corportation, which built and possessed 99-year rights to operate the piers at the Port of Havana, is seeking compensation after the Castro regime took over the port upon assuming power. 

 The company is suing Carnival, MSC Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean for disembarking nearly 1 million tourists on the docks between 2015 and 2019 and taking in hundreds of millions of dollars from those trips paying Cuba but not Havana Docks. 

A lower court ordered the cruise lines to pay Havana Docks $440 million. The Supreme Court will review an appeals panel’s decision to reverse the judgment since the company’s 99-year rights to the docks expired in 2004, before the voyages in question took place. 

Havana Docks warned that would cut off legal claims Congress intended to allow, but the cruise lines said the petition was “full of overstatements” and the case didn’t merit the justices’ attention. 

“The decision below correctly resolved a narrow issue that turns on the particular metes and bounds of a century-old property interest governed by the vagaries of Cuban law. That issue is as factbound as it gets,” the cruise lines wrote in court filings.