The Protecting Americans from Russian Litigation Act
May 12, 2026
In June 2020, Russia enacted the so-called Lugovoy Law, Article 248.1 of the Russian Arbitrazh Procedural Code, which allows Russian courts to assume exclusive jurisdiction over sanctioned persons, ignoring contractual choice-of-court and arbitration clauses. Article 248.2 authorizes anti-suit and anti-arbitration injunctions by Russian courts to enforce that exclusive jurisdiction. Article 248 has been invoked repeatedly in Russian courts, including disputes where foreign parties sought to rely on agreed foreign forums. In response, as I discussed in a prior post, U.S. and other foreign courts have already granted anti-suit and anti-enforcement injunctions to prevent enforcement of Russian judgments obtained under the Lugovoy Law from being recognized abroad.
Now Congress may now be moving toward a legislative response. The Protecting Americans from Russian Litigation Act (S. 2934) (“the Bill”) passed the U.S. Senate unanimously on April 28, 2026. A predecessor House bill, H.R. 9563, passed the House in December 2024. The Bill, if enacted, would prohibit federal and state courts from enforcing foreign judgments and arbitral awards where the claim arose from U.S. sanctions impeding performance of a contract or where the jurisdiction of the foreign court or tribunal is based, even in part, on the imposition of U.S. sanctions.
The Jurisdictional Conflict Is Real
Freshfields reports that Russian courts invoked Article 248 more than 200 times in 2024 to assume exclusive jurisdiction over a dispute or to issue anti-arbitration relief. Russian anti-suit or anti-arbitration injunctions can be backed by penalties as high as the amount in dispute. The largest reported fine to date is 91.5 quintillion rubles (about $1.2 quintillion). Supporters of the Bill testified in March 2026 that U.S. companies already faced Russian judgments in the hundreds of millions of dollars for complying with U.S. sanctions and export controls.
U.S. sanctions clearly interfere with the ability of sanctioned entities to engage in dispute resolution. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) authorizes the provision of certain legal services, including representing blocked persons in U.S. litigation or arbitration and initiating proceedings. But its Russia regulations separately restrict the receipt of payment and prohibit, in the absence of a license, the settlement or enforcement of a judgment or arbitral award that would transfer blocked property. The same regulations make unauthorized transfers involving blocked property null and void.
Russian parties are still heavily engaged in cross-border dispute resolution. The London Court of International Arbitration’s 2024 casework report listed Russia among its top five international users. Many Russia-related disputes arise months or years after the relevant sanctions measure, payment blockage, contractual termination, asset freeze, or failed restructuring. Sanctions-related disputes are becoming a durable feature of cross-border dispute resolution.
The Bill responds to a problem that sanctions lawyers and arbitration counsel now know well. Sanctions measures increasingly generate not only compliance obligations and commercial disruption, but also jurisdictional conflict, parallel proceedings, and contested recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. A dispute that begins as a question of contractual performance may quickly become a contest over forum selection and anti-suit relief. The proposed Bill is a mechanism designed to protect U.S. persons from sanctions-retaliation litigation.
How the Bill Would Work
The Bill, if enacted, would add a new 28 U.S.C. § 1660, which would bar any person from bringing a civil action in federal or state court in the United States to enforce a foreign judgment or foreign arbitral award when (1) the underlying dispute arose from actions taken to comply with U.S. sanctions or export controls that impeded contract performance, or (2) the foreign court or tribunal asserted jurisdiction because of U.S. sanctions, export controls, or foreign countermeasures enacted in response to them.
The Bill would apply to any covered civil action pending on or commenced after the date of enactment. It also contains savings provisions. In particular, it would not limit the authority of the President, OFAC, or other U.S. Government officials to exercise any statutory or other powers conferred on them under applicable federal or state law, and it would not displace remedies otherwise available under U.S. law. The Bill also contains a savings clause for contractual rights. It would not limit any right, remedy or cause of action arising under or relating to a party’s contractual rights when the parties agreed to resolve disputes in a U.S. state or federal court or by arbitration seated in the United States.
Several features of the Bill are important. First, it is not a general anti-Russia statute. Its trigger is sanctions-affected litigation, not Russian nationality or the Russian origin of the claimant. The operative question is whether the foreign judgment or award arises from U.S. sanctions/export-control compliance or from a foreign tribunal’s assertion of jurisdiction because of such measures or related countermeasures.
Second, the Bill is narrow in its’s scope: it does not create a damages claim, an express counterclaim right, or a new statutory attachment regime. The Bill seeks to keep sanctions-retaliation judgments and awards from being converted into enforceable obligations in U.S. courts.
Third, the Bill is more targeted than the 2024 House predecessor. H.R. 9563 would have barred a person from bringing a civil action in federal court to obtain relief for a sanctions-affected merits claim. The Bill instead targets recognition and enforcement actions, reaches both court judgments and arbitral awards, extends to state as well as federal courts, and preserves ordinary contractual litigation or arbitration within the United States.
Changes to Existing Law
The Bill is not being written on a blank slate. In the United States, the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments is generally governed by state, rather than federal, law. In those states that have adopted the Uniform Foreign-Country Money Judgments Recognition Act, state law permits non-recognition for fraud, violation of public policy, conflict with another judgment, violation of a forum-selection agreement, or serious doubt about the integrity of the rendering court or proceeding, among other grounds. Those are substantial tools, but they are case- and judgment-specific.
The recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards, by contrast, is already governed by federal law. Chapter 2 of the Federal Arbitration Act implements the New York Convention (“Convention”), and 9 U.S.C. § 207 directs courts to confirm covered awards unless one of the Convention’s grounds for refusal is shown. Article V of the Convention makes those grounds limited and exhaustive.
Preemptive anti-enforcement relief is also limited because it raises international comity concerns. As Hannah Buxbaum has discussed, courts in the United States are sometimes willing to issue anti-enforcement injunctions, but the standards for doing so remain unclear.
The Bill adopts a categorical approach to judgments and awards as a matter of federal law. It bars enforcement of all covered foreign judgments and arbitral awards. In this respect, it resembles the 2010 SPEECH Act, a federal statute that prohibits the recognition and enforcement of foreign defamation judgments that fail to meet First Amendment standards of free speech.
A New Tool, but Narrower Than It Sounds
The Bill prohibits U.S. enforcement of certain sanctions-related judgments and awards but it would not eliminate the underlying conflict. It would make covered Russian judgments and awards functionally useless in the United States. But it would not prevent proceedings in Russia, nor would it shield assets located in Russia or in other jurisdictions willing to recognize and enforce these judgments and awards. Contemporary practice already shows that asset geography is decisive: when the non-Russian party has assets in Russia or in so-called “friendly” or neutral states, pressure remains acute. In that sense, the Bill would only address the risk of asset seizure in the United States.
English courts have used anti-suit injunctions to enforce agreements that Russian courts treat as displaced by Article 248. And the European Union now prohibits recognition or enforcement in the European Union of Russian rulings issued under Article 248. The American law more closely resembles the EU approach.
Conclusion
If enacted, the Bill would mark a meaningful shift in U.S. policy relating to transnational litigation. The old model was case-specific: limited grounds under state law for nonrecognition of foreign judgments, narrow defenses under the New York Convention for refusing enforcement of arbitral awards, and occasional anti-enforcement relief. The new model would be categorical for a specific class of sanctions-linked foreign litigation and arbitration.
If enacted, the Bill would send a clear signal: U.S. courts will not enforce sanctions-retaliation judgments or awards. That is significant because the Lugovoy Law operates from the opposite premise. Articles 248.1 and 248.2 pull sanctions-affected disputes into Russian courts and protect that jurisdiction through anti-suit and anti-arbitration relief. The proposed U.S. response does not try to stop those Russian proceedings at their source, but it would block their downstream effects in the United States.