A federal appeals court moved to allow Florida to enforce a law restricting purchases by foreign buyers from China.
The law, SB 264, prohibits land purchases from “any person who is domiciled in a foreign country of concern and is not a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States.”
In a 2-1 decision, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found: “As the state officials explained to the district court, the registration requirement was adopted to address food, individual, and national security concerns because China (and other countries of concern) started buying large chunks of land in the United States.”
“State officials, for example, submitted to the district court evidence showing the Chinese government and Chinese foreign principal investors combined owned nearly 580,000 acres of agricultural land in the United States by the end of 2021,” the decision reads. “And according to these reports, that rise in land ownership didn’t happen in a vacuum—it occurred alongside concerns the Chinese government was ‘working aggressively to undermine U[nited States] interests’ via traditional espionage, agricultural land acquisition, cyber espionage and information warfare, and harassment and blackmailing. The national security concerns underlying the registration requirement are thus a ‘reasonably conceivable’ basis for this provision.”
“Today we won big at the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, defending our law preventing ownership of Florida land by the Chinese Communist Party,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier wrote on X. “Thanks to Senior Deputy Solicitor General Forrester and Assistant Solicitor General Schenck for securing a huge win for FL!”
