Title III Clarity, Notice, and Reporting Act

The official summary states that Havana Docks held a time-limited concession to operate docks at the Port of Havana, set to expire in 2004, and that Cuban authorities seized the docks without compensation in 1960. Congress later created a private right of action in Title III for nationals owning claims to property confiscated on or after January 1, 1959. The Court held the cruise lines' use of the docks from 2016 to 2019 was use of property which was confiscated, so Havana Docks was not required to show trafficking in its concession interest itself. The Eleventh Circuit judgment was vacated and remanded. The strongest originalist and textualist reading stresses the plain words Congress wrote. Title III reaches any property and any interest therein, defines property to include physical things, and defines confiscation to include seizure of control. On that reading, armed seizure of the docks extinguished the concession and took the physical works, and later paid passenger use was commercial use without authorization. This reading rejects a counterfactual test that would ask what would have happened without confiscation, because that test has no basis in the text and would exclude core trafficking cases. The strongest living-constitution and progressive reading stresses remedy, deterrence, and adaptation to changed conditions. On that view, the law should answer the lasting harm of uncompensated expropriation and discourage commerce that sustains repressive control of stolen assets. Confiscated property remains tainted even as legal forms expire or commerce changes, from docks to modern cruise networks carrying nearly a million passengers. Courts should therefore read the remedy to reach present-day commercial benefit tied to past taking, while using fair procedures to protect ordinary travelers and workers. VFA proposes that Congress could work within the decision by clarifying future application rather than relitigating this case. The proposal would define how physical property and interests relate for trafficking, require written notice to a carrier and a 90-day chance to stop the challenged use before suit, direct the State Department to publish travel and carrier guidance, and require annual public reports on filings, awards, and settlement amounts. It would leave state courts to apply their own procedures and leave licensed travel rules to existing executive authority, preserving both accountability and lawful engagement. The strongest objection is that notice and clarification could weaken deterrence or invite continued use of confiscated property during a cure period. The answer is that clear rules increase compliance and compensation over time. Carriers that receive plain guidance are more likely to avoid tainted ports, victims gain a clearer path to proof, and public reporting lets Congress judge whether the remedy deters support for confiscation or needs revision at sunset.