Summary

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH delivered the opinion of the Court.

In 1960, a year after assuming power in Cuba, Fidel Castro declared that the new Communist government would seize all "Yankee property" in Cuba. Castro made good on that promise. The Cuban Government confiscated a variety of American businesses then operating in Cuba, including Exxon's oil refinery and service stations. Cuba transferred Exxon's property to Cuban government-owned companies.

In 1996, to afford victims of "Castro's wrongful seizures" a "judicial remedy in the courts of the United States," Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Helms-Burton Act, formally known as the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act. §301, 110 Stat. 815, 22 U. S. C. §6081. That Act created a private right of action for U. S. nationals whose property was unlawfully confiscated: They may sue Cuban agencies and instrumentalities that possess, use, or otherwise traffic in the confiscated property.

Foreign sovereigns, including their agencies and instrumentalities, are presumptively immune from suit in U. S. courts. The question here is whether the Helms-Burton Act abrogates the foreign sovereign immunity of Cuban agencies and instrumentalities--or whether plaintiffs such as Exxon suing under the Act must also satisfy one of the exceptions to immunity in the generally applicable Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, or FSIA. 90 Stat. 2891, 28 U. S. C. §§1330, 1602 et seq.

We conclude that the Helms-Burton Act itself abrogates the sovereign immunity of Cuban agencies and instrumentalities. Therefore, plaintiffs who sue Cuban agencies or instrumentalities under the Act are not required to also satisfy an FSIA exception.