Foreign Citizens Removed From Local Homes: How Florida Senate Bill 264 Violates Federal Legislation and the Fourteenth Amendment

On July 1, 2023, Florida Senate Bill 264, titled “Interest of Foreign Countries,” took effect. While it covers government contracts and data storage, the bill primarily amended a critical regulation on aliens’ land ownership: the acquisition of agricultural lands is restricted for “foreign principals” associated with specified countries—China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Syria [1]. Lands within 10 miles of critical government infrastructure are similarly restricted to these groups. Furthermore, real estate cannot be purchased by Chinese individuals domiciled in China who are non-permanent U.S. residents [2], except for certain asylees, who may purchase one property up to two acres located five miles away from a state military facility. Do foreign citizens follow the same jurisdiction as U.S. citizens in purchasing property? Can states limit the types of property foreigners can hold, especially when their provisions align with the federal government’s agenda to restrict foreign investments from specified countries? If so, are these state restrictions lawful?

An examination of past and current legislation on non-citizen land ownership shows that, following the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in Shen v. Commissioner (2025), Florida’s SB264 is a wrongful piece of legislation for two reasons. On one level, it violates the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) of 2018 by mistakenly assuming the authority of a state to issue a blanket prohibition that overrides FIRRMA’s different enforcement framework [3]. Hence, the statute is subject to obstacle preemption [4], as it frustrates Congress’s decision to entrust the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and the President with transaction-specific reviews. More broadly, SB264 also contradicts the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by denying equal legal protection to noncitizens within its “jurisdiction” regardless of their nationality [5].

 SB264 was not the first law under which specific groups of non-citizens were targeted through restrictions on property ownership. Historical cases clearly demonstrate that property ownership is heavily subject to constantly changing foreign relations. California’s 1913 Alien Land Law, for instance, targeted Asian immigrants by framing the statute to prohibit land purchases by aliens ineligible for naturalized citizenship; this was partly due to the economic objective of limiting Japanese farmers’ immense success in the United States [6]. Later statutes extended these restrictions to children born in the United States who are descendants of aliens from Asian countries. Consequently, when Kajiro Oyama paid for agricultural land in 1934 and 1937—both registered in the name of his son, Fred Oyama, a U.S. citizen—California determined that this purchase violated the Alien Land Law and conducted an escheat to retrieve ownership of the land. The Supreme Court ruled that the escheat violated Fred Oyama's Fourteenth Amendment rights, specifically the Equal Protection Clause, which mandates states to provide equal protection to everyone within their jurisdiction [7]. This decision guaranteed descendants of aliens lawful property ownership under the Equal Protection Clause. However, it leaves unresolved whether the state’s discriminatory restriction on the property rights of aliens from designated nations, such as Kajiro Oyama, is unconstitutional.

 The power of the State to regulate the rights of non-citizens has continued in recent decades. After Florida Senate Bill 264 restricted real estate and agricultural land purchases by non-citizens from specific countries, four Chinese citizens and a real estate brokerage filed a lawsuit against Florida in Shen v. Simpson (2025)[8]. The plaintiffs argued that SB264 is unlawful, unsuccessfully requesting a preliminary injunction to pause the implementation of SB264 while the lawsuit took place. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that because the Chinese plaintiffs were domiciled in Florida, the property-purchase prohibition does not apply to their proposed purchases, as SB264 only applies to those domiciled in China [9]. That said, this decision raises a significant concern: Chinese aliens who have not yet established domiciliary status in Florida, but reside in Florida for work, family, study, or other purposes, are categorically prohibited from owning an interest in Florida real property. Alien land laws that restrict property ownership by nationality thus impose significant difficulties for every noncitizen of the targeted nations, especially those who have not established domicile status in the U.S. [10]. These provisions, however, must be considered alongside the federal government’s authority on foreign investment. The Exon–Florio Amendment of 1988 to the Defense Production Act (DPA) (1950) granted the President the authority to oversee foreign investments that impact national security; Section 721, codified at 50 U.S.C. § 4565(d), particularly grants the President the power to intervene when it is necessary to deny foreign investment for the national security of the United States [11]. For example, in May 2024, President Biden shut down MineOne Partners Ltd., a Chinese firm located near Wyoming’s Warren Air Force Base, due to the company’s cell towers and potential eavesdropping activity [12]. That said, compliance with national interest does not establish lawfulness. Florida’s SB264 is one such law that, despite being consistent with national interests, remains unlawful.

Frustrating the Operation of FIRRMA

Careful examination reveals that Florida’s SB264 contradicts the purpose and operation of the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA), a federal law enacted in August 2018 that modernized and reinforced the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to better address national security risks [13]. Section 4565(a)(4)(B)(ii) of the DPA, heavily amended by FIRRMA, grants the federal government the power to investigate a foreign person’s real-estate transactions when the use of the property is considered to pose a threat to national security [14]. Section 4565(a)(4)(C)(i), on the other hand, excludes certain single housing units and urban purchases from the purchase restriction. The goal of FIRRMA’s amendments to the DPA is clear: to review the risks of specific property purchases [15]. However, this restriction is not categorical; risks are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Section 4565(l)(4), for instance, mandates that CFIUS’s decisions on suspension, referral, and mitigation must rest on a risk-based evaluation [16]. This also helps explain why § 4565(a)(4)(C)(i) excludes certain low-risk properties from the risk evaluation process [17]. By contrast, although Florida’s motivation to restrict foreign investment that intrudes on national security is akin to that of FIRRMA, its procedures frustrate FIRRMA’s operation. This procedural difference becomes significant under the obstacle-preemption doctrine [18], which requires state laws to yield when they frustrate Congress’s purposes. Unlike CFIUS, Florida’s prohibition on property purchases by Chinese citizens is not transaction-specific [19]. Consequently, while CFIUS provides mitigation measures (such as permitting an individually assessed purchase so long as it does not pose security threats), Florida offers no general exception. Moreover, due to the categorical nature of Florida’s prohibition, the restriction extends—by default—to individual homes that would be excused under FIRRMA. Thus, Florida’s categorical restriction on property purchase by Chinese nationals (specifically those domiciled in China), in disallowing tailored evaluations for individual transactions, violates the case-by-case evaluation principle of FIRRMA; such an exclusion of potential mitigation decisions significantly affects groups in Florida that do not pose national security concerns [20].

A useful precedent that indicates SB264’s unlawfulness is Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council (2000). In 1996, Massachusetts enacted a law restricting state purchases from companies that engage in business transactions with Burma [21]. The federal government later adopted a sanction against Burma, and in 2000, the Supreme Court held that the Massachusetts law was preempted because it disrupted the federal sanctions framework: although the federal government adopted a sanction against Burma, its scheme allows the President to suspend or waive sanctions at discretion; the Massachusetts Law, however, places a categorical provision that penalizes more companies than federal law [22]. Therefore, just as the Massachusetts law was preempted by the federal framework, Florida’s SB264, which similarly implements a categorical restriction that frustrates the federal sanctions framework on land purchases related to a specific country, should likewise be held preempted. Judge Wilson’s dissent in Shen identified ways in which SB264 obstructs FIRRMA’s procedures. While FIRRMA conducts individualized case reviews, SB264 implements a status-based prohibition; therefore, FIRRMA permits mitigation while SB264 allows no general mitigation exception [23]. Judge Wilson’s dissent provides the interpretation that while the Shen case centered on the plaintiffs’ lack of standing to challenge SB264, the possibility that the law is preempted cannot be overlooked.

Violating the Fourteenth Amendment

The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified on July 9, 1868, contains the Equal Protection Clause. The Fourteenth Amendment reads, in part:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws [24].

Notably, the Equal Protection Clause uses the term “any person” rather than “any citizen,” which extends its protection to non-citizens within the United States—an interpretation supported by two Supreme Court cases. One of these cases involves Yick Wo, a Chinese man denied permission to operate a laundry in a wooden building, who was imprisoned in 1886 for unauthorized operation of laundries. Yet, while officials denied permission to Chinese individuals, non-Chinese individuals were granted permission to operate laundries. In Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), Yick challenged his imprisonment for operating without permission. The Supreme Court concluded that permissions that discriminate based on national origin and race were unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment, because the Equal Protection Clause applies to noncitizens [25]. Yick Wo sets a precedent for finding nationality-based discriminatory regulations unconstitutional, which is not limited to regulations explicitly discriminatory on paper, but also to those enforced in a discriminatory way. Thus, a law may violate the Equal Protection Clause if it is enforced in a discriminatory manner, even if its original wording appears neutral [26]. A similar case is Takahashi v. Fish & Game Commission (1948), in which California denied Tarao Takahashi—a legal California resident and Japanese national—his commercial fishing license, claiming that the prohibition barred aliens ineligible for citizenship, which primarily targeted Japanese immigrants at the time. The Supreme Court found this prohibition unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause: Preventing certain persons from obtaining a license merely based on nationality or ancestry violates the Clause’s statement that the law protects “any person” [27].

Although both Yick Wo and Takahashi established that specific regulations that discriminate based on nationality or race violate the Equal Protection Clause, it cannot be hastily concluded that all distinctions based on race, citizenship, or country of origin are automatically unconstitutional. The process by which a provision is found unconstitutional under the Clause, illustrated through the two cases, is that a court first establishes that the plaintiffs are protected (as they are all “persons”), then determines on a case-by-case basis whether the specific regulations violate the principle of protection. State classifications based on race and nationality usually trigger strict scrutiny, under which a regulation passes only if the provision is narrowly tailored to serve a specific governmental interest [28]. Therefore, a strict scrutiny analysis of SB264 concerns whether the bill addresses a governmental interest narrowly and through the least restrictive means possible.

A review of Florida’s SB264 indicates its unconstitutionality. Since Yick Wo and Takahashi establish that the equal protection of laws extends to individuals of all nationalities, it is reasonable to conclude that Chinese citizens domiciled in China while residing, working, or studying in Florida are similarly protected from unjustified treatment by local governments. Specifications that prohibit certain Chinese citizens from purchasing real estate in Florida are regulations that forcibly deprive a person of property rights solely on the basis of nationality, which violates the protection granted by the Equal Protection Clause. Prohibitions that selectively apply to non-permanent residents domiciled in China, among other countries, can function as discrimination based on nationality [29]. Most critically, SB264 does not require a connection with a foreign government when denying property-purchase rights to individuals who are categorically within the demographic subject to the restriction; this is a sweeping denial that contradicts its original purpose—to prioritize national security [30]. It also fails to pass strict scrutiny, since a categorical discrimination by nationality does not narrowly address national security issues in the least restrictive means possible. By contrast, the state’s purpose can still be achieved through a case-by-case review without categorically denying property-purchase rights to a group of Chinese nationals. Hence, the criterion by which SB264 bans property ownership is not the proper risk that it aims to address, but rather nationality, a factor protected by the Equal Protection Clause. The law and its implementation are thus a clear violation of rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

In short, Florida’s SB264, which was challenged by the plaintiffs in Shen v. Simpson, is unlawful in two respects. First, it frustrates the principles and purpose of the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) of 2018, as it falsely assumes the authority of a state to issue a blanket prohibition that conflicts with FIRRMA’s regulatory framework. Moreover, SB264 contradicts the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by denying equal protection to noncitizens within the state’s jurisdiction, regardless of their nationality [31]. Although discrimination based on nationality is unconstitutional, especially when there is insufficient justification for such discrimination, the prioritization of national security interests can nonetheless serve to sustain such restrictions. Therefore, one suggestion is that the state should work with noncitizens on an individual basis, similar to the principles of FIRRMA: the state may prioritize national interests while offering adequate support to noncitizens—who demonstrate no threat to national security—in purchasing property, thereby providing a predictable pathway toward eligibility without compromising national security. However, this is just a suggestion. Ultimately, SB264 remains unlawful, as the bill should not incorporate discrimination based on nationality.

Endnotes

[1] Rules Committee et al., “CS/CS/SB 264 — Interests of Foreign Countries,” The Florida Senate, 2023, https://www.flsenate.gov/Committees/BillSummaries/2023/html/264.

[2] Interests of Foreign Countries, Pub. L. CS/CS/SB 264, Ch. 2023-33 Laws of Florida (2023), https://laws.flrules.org/2023/33.

[3] Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018, Pub. L. Pub. L. No. 115-232, Title XVII, Subtitle A, 132 John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 2173 (2018), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-132/pdf/STATUTE-132-Pg1636.pdf; Authority to Review Certain Mergers, Acquisitions, and Takeovers, 50 U.S.C. § 4565(d), accessed October 2, 2026, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/4565.

[4] Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U.S. 52, 67 (1941).

[5] U.S. Constitution, § amend. XIV, sec. 1, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment.

[6] An Act Relating to the Rights, Powers and Disabilities of Aliens and of Certain Companies, Associations and Corporations with Respect to Property in This State, Chapter 113 Statutes of California (1913), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1913/d723; Japanese Ambassador “The Japanese Ambassador to the Secretary of State,” to Secretary of State, May 9, 1913, File No. 811.52/164, Foreign Relations of the United States, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1913/d724.

[7] Oyama v. California, 332 U.S. 633 (1948), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/332/633/.

[8] “Shen v. Simpson,” American Civil Liberties Union, n.d., accessed September 25, 2026, https://www.aclu.org/cases/shen-v-simpson.

[9] Shen v. Commissioner, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, No. 23-12737 (United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit November 4, 2025), https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202312737.pdf.

[10] Internal Revenue Service, “Topic No. 851, Resident and Nonresident Aliens,” Internal Revenue Service, accessed September 25, 2026, https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc851.

[11] Authority to Review Certain Mergers, Acquisitions, and Takeovers, n.d.

[12] Pro Farmer Editors, “U.S. Intensifying Scrutiny of Chinese Land Purchases Near Military Bases,” Pro Farmer Analysis, AgWeb, July 8, 2024, https://www.agweb.com/u-s-intensifying-scrutiny-chinese-land-purchases-near-military-bases.

[13] Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018.

[14] Authority to Review Certain Mergers, Acquisitions, and Takeovers, 50 United States Code § 4565, accessed October 2, 2026, https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=%28title%3A50+section%3A4565+edition%3Aprelim%29; “Regulations Pertaining to Certain Transactions by Foreign Persons Involving Real Estate in the United States,” January 17, 2020, https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-VIII/part-802.

[15] Authority to Review Certain Mergers, Acquisitions, and Takeovers, n.d.; “Regulations Pertaining to Certain Transactions by Foreign Persons Involving Real Estate in the United States.”

[16] Authority to Review Certain Mergers, Acquisitions, and Takeovers, n.d.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U.S. 52, 67 (1941).

[19] Purchase or Acquisition of Real Property by the People’s Republic of China Prohibited, Pub. L. Fla. Stat. § 692.204, Florida Statutes (2023), https://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0600-0699/0692/Sections/0692.204.html.

[20] Shen v. Commissioner, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

[21] Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council, 530 U.S. 363 (2000), https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep530/usrep530363/usrep530363.pdf.

[22] Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council.

[23] Shen v. Commissioner, Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, No. 23-12737, slip op. at 76–82 (11th Cir. Nov. 4, 2025) (Wilson, J., dissenting).

[24] U.S. Constitution, amend. XIV, sec. 1

[25] Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (Supreme Court of the United States 1886), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/118/356/.

[26] Yick Wo v. Hopkins.

[27] Takahashi v. Fish & Game Commission, 334 U.S. 410, 418–21 (1948).

[28] Bernal v. Fainter, 467 U.S. 216, 219 (1984).

[29] Purchase or Acquisition of Real Property by the People’s Republic of China Prohibited, Florida Statutes § 692.204, https://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0600-0699/0692/Sections/0692.204.html.

[30] Purchase or Acquisition of Real Property by the People’s Republic of China Prohibited, n.d.

[31] U.S. Constitution, amend. XIV, sec. 1