A U.S. judge who previously wrote a concurring opinion against Florida’s law barring Chinese nationals from purchasing land in the state has an activist history.
This past February, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals narrowly blocked a law that would restrict “Chinese citizens from buying land in the state from being enforced against two people who sued over the ban,” per the Hill:
A panel of judges from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said in an order Thursday that the plaintiffs showed a “substantial likelihood of success” in proving their case against the law, which was signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in May 2023.
The appeals court panel did not entirely block the law but granted an injunction for the two plaintiffs, Yifan Shen and Zhiming Xu, who feared they would have to cancel contracts they had signed to buy homes.
The panel wrote in its decision that the plaintiffs were granted the injunction because their “recent and pending transactions create the most imminent risk of irreparable harm” without the court’s intervention.
Judge Nancy Abudu had a more forceful opinion about the Florida law, saying it “blatantly violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection against discrimination,” adding to the narrative that any ban on Chinese nationals purchasing land in the United States would be akin to racism. As Pirate Wires pointed out in a lengthy article, the law did have some exceptions for certain Chinese citizens.
“Chinese citizens aren’t even really banned from buying land: Those with non-tourist visas can buy a residential property so long as it’s five miles away from a military base and smaller than two acres,” it noted.
A new Federal Appeals Court judge — who was previously at the ACLU, and the Southern Poverty Law Center — has halted a Florida law that bans Chinese nationals with no connection to the US from buying US land, as well as any property within a 10-mile radius of a military base, on… pic.twitter.com/2YA893Wd3U
— Pirate Wires (@PirateWires) March 19, 2024
In her concurring opinion, Judge Abudu described anti-Chinese Communist Party statements from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as being “anti-Chinese,” arguing that the bill wanted to establish a “blanket ban” prohibiting all Chinese citizens from buying land in Florida. Pirate Wires cited her long history of activism:
Abudu’s ruling shouldn’t have been surprising to anyone familiar with her record, which is very short on the bench — she just began serving on the Eleventh Circuit in September 2023, her first job as a judge — but very long in the world of legal activism. In 2005, she began working at the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project in Georgia, and in 2013 became legal Director of the ACLU of Florida — which represented the Chinese plaintiffs in this case, by the way. After she left the ACLU in 2019 she became Deputy Legal Director for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Furthermore, Adubu’s activism caused such a stir that it paused her confirmation to the court for nearly a year as she faced opposition from Republicans and moderate Senate Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Manchin even voted against her nomination.
“With Americans’ faith in our courts at historic lows, now is not the time to confirm partisan advocates to lifetime appointments — especially to our circuit courts,” a spokesperson for Manchin said at the time.
The 11th Circuit ruling was just an injunction pending an appeal in April and it has no value as precedent. It can be reversed when the appeal is heard on April 15 in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Miami.
The case is Shen v. Fla. Dep’t of Agriculture & Consumer Services, No. 23-12737 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
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