Congress Advances Updates to the HEAR Act of 2016
In December 2025, the Senate unanimously passed the HEAR Act of 2025, a bill intended to clarify the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 (the HEAR Act). In 2016, President Obama signed the HEAR Act, which imposed a nationwide, 6-year statute of limitations for cases involving Nazi-confiscated art.1 The 6-year clock begins to run when a claimant acquires “actual knowledge” of the artwork’s identity and location and of their possessory interest in it.
The HEAR Act was intended “[t]o ensure that claims to artwork and other property stolen or misappropriated by the Nazis . . . are resolved in a just and fair manner.” The law referred to the 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art and the 2009 Terezin Declara…