In 1913, three decades after Congress approved the Chinese Exclusion Act, California prohibited Chinese and other Asian immigrants from owning land. More than a dozen other states, including Florida, enacted similar "alien land laws" during the next few decades.
S.B. 264, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed into law this month, bears more than a passing resemblance to those xenophobic edicts, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argues in a federal lawsuit it filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. "This law is unconstitutional," the ACLU's complaint says. "It violates the equal protection and due process guarantees under the U.S. Constitution; it intrudes on the federal government's power to superintend foreign affairs, foreign investment, and national security; and it recalls the wrongful animus of similar state laws from decades past—laws that were eventually struck down by courts or repealed by legislatures."
