A federal appeals court has halted the enforcement of a Florida law that prohibited Chinese citizens from purchasing property in the state. An injunction was granted to two of the plaintiff's in the case.
The Feb. 1 ruling by a three-judge panel within the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit said that the plaintiffs showed a “substantial likelihood of success” in proving their case against the law, which was signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in May 2023.
The ruling specifically points to the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) – a system of national security review of real estate purchases created in 2018 by Congress.
The injunction was partially granted to plaintiffs Yifan Shen and Zhiming Xu, who had been working with Multi-Choice Realty, Inc. on property transactions.
“The balance of equities tips in their favor because their recent and pending transactions create the most imminent risk of irreparable harm in the absence of a stay,” the ruling reads.
The plaintiffs in this case are being represented by several law firms and civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, (ACLU) DeHeng Law Offices PC, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), and law firm Quinn Emanuel.
“There’s no doubt that Florida’s discriminatory housing law is unconstitutional,” Ashley Gorski, senior staff attorney at ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement. “The court’s decision brings two of our clients tremendous relief, and we will continue fighting to prevent this law from being enforced more broadly.”
Eleventh Circuit Judge Nancy Abudu - who wrote a separate concurring opinion - went on to criticize the new law, which passed in Florida’s 2023 legislative session and was signed by DeSantis, restricting people from Communist countries - particularly China - from owning property in the state.
“Notwithstanding the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections, one hundred years ago, the Supreme Court held that, “each state, in the absence of any treaty provision to the contrary, has power to deny to aliens the right to own land within its borders,” Abudu wrote. “Those holdings may have had support in 1923, but it is now 2024.”
A previous request for injunction was denied by a federal judge last August. Prior to that, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a Statement of Interest in support of the broader lawsuit against the law prohibiting certain foreign nationals from purchasing property. This filing opened an investigation into whether provisions within the law are in violation of the Fair Housing Act and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
