Court Refuses to Block Chinese Property Law

TALLAHASSEE — A divided federal appeals court Tuesday rejected a request to block key parts of a 2023 Florida law that restricts people from China from purchasing property in the state.

A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, said plaintiffs did not have legal standing to challenge one major issue in the law and ruled against the plaintiffs on two other issues. The overall effect was to reject the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction.

The case has focused heavily on part of the law that prevents people “domiciled” in China from purchasing property in Florida, with some exceptions. Under the law, such people are each allowed to purchase one residential property up to two acres if the property is not within five miles of a military base and they have non-tourist visas. Three of the plaintiffs are in the United States on visas, while one is seeking asylum.

But in Tuesday’s 63-page majority opinion, Judge Robert Luck said the plaintiffs did not have standing to challenge that part of the law because of reasons such as not being domiciled in China.

Luck, who was joined in the opinion by Judge Barbara Lagoa, detailed the circumstances of each of four individual plaintiffs. For example, he wrote that plaintiff Yifan Shen, who has a work visa, has lived in Florida since 2019 and signed a contract in April 2023 to purchase a home in Orlando. The law applies to people who did not own “any interest” in property before July 1, 2023, the opinion said.

The opinion said, “Shen is not domiciled in China” and is domiciled in Florida, which means the law doesn’t apply to her.

“According to Shen, she has lived in the United States since 2016 and in Florida since 2019, her employer is trying to obtain a permanent labor certification for her, she ‘plan(s) to apply for permanent residency in the United States,’ and she intends for the Orlando home to be her primary residence,” the opinion said. “Shen, therefore, is present in Florida and intends to remain indefinitely. The fact that Shen hasn’t obtained permanent immigration status doesn’t change the domicile analysis, because Florida law allows noncitizens subject to removal to establish Florida as their domicile.”

The lawsuit, filed in 2023 in federal court in Tallahassee, contends that the restrictions violate constitutional equal-protection rights and the federal Fair Housing Act and are trumped by federal law. Other plaintiffs are Yongxin Liu, Zhiming Xu, Xinxi Wang and Multi-Choice Realty LLC, a real-estate broker.

Chief U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor in 2023 also refused to grant a preliminary injunction, though his ruling differed from the appeals court on the standing issue.

As they approved the law, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican lawmakers pointed to a need to curb the influence of the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party in Florida. But opponents said the law was discriminatory and improperly conflated people from China with the Chinese government.

In a dissenting opinion Tuesday, Judge Charles Wilson described the law (SB 264) as “part of a modern resurgence of ‘alien land laws,’ which were prevalent in the early part of last century but fell out of favor around the same time as other laws restricting property ownership based on race or ancestry.”

While saying he had “doubts about the majority’s analysis regarding plaintiffs’ standing to challenge SB 264’s purchase restriction,” Wilson focused his dissent on arguments about equal-protection rights and whether the federal government’s authority to screen foreign investments trumps the state law. That authority is carried out through what is known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CIFUS.

“In sum, the CFIUS process — informed by this nation’s commerce, foreign policy, and national security experts — does not target identified countries or nationalities, conducts thorough risk review of individual transactions, and allows for negotiation with parties to mitigate risk while allowing safe transactions that strengthen our economy to proceed,” Wilson wrote. “Meanwhile, SB 264 — informed by state representatives and a governor without national security expertise — targets Chinese domiciliaries, blanketly bans all transactions which fall under its ambit, and fails to afford parties any flexibility, undermining national economic and diplomatic leverage. The power ‘to regulate foreign commerce’ has long been understood as ‘an obvious and essential branch of the federal administration,’ yet here Florida flouts these principles of federalism.”

The plaintiffs also sought an injunction against parts of the law that require people who are domiciled in China to register information about property they own in Florida and require that all people buying property in Florida sign affidavits saying they are complying with the 2023 law.

The majority opinion, for example, rejected arguments that the requirements violate the federal Fair Housing Act because they are discriminatory.

“The registration requirement directs that property owners who are domiciled in China register their interests in Florida real estate; it does not restrict anyone from owning property, and it does not require or permit a person to refuse to sell to, rent to, or negotiate with anyone,” Luck wrote. “And the same is true of the affidavit requirement. It mandates that every purchaser of Florida real property sign an affidavit saying their purchase complies with SB 264.”

©2025 The News Service of Florida. All rights reserved.