After a high-altitude balloon from China flew across U.S. airspace in early 2023, the Arkansas General Assembly reacted by passing two statutes that curtailed the right of certain immigrants to own and acquire types of property.

Act 636 of 2023 prohibits aliens from every country listed under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (24 in total) from acquiring interests in agricultural land. Act 174 of 2024 prohibits the same set of aliens (except for those from Nicaragua) from acquiring interests in “digital asset mining” businesses.

Acts 636 and 174 are naked legislative attempts to force immigrants of Chinese ancestry out of the crypto industry—not for any harm they’ve done or for any danger they pose, but because of where they’re from and who they are. Jones Eagle LLC, which owns and operates a data center in Arkansas, decided to fight back. It sued the state officials responsible for enforcing the acts in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas. That court found those acts to be incompatible with federal law and thus preempted. The court thus issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the acts. Arkansas has now appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Cato has filed an amicus brief in support of Jones Eagle.

In our brief, we provide an alternative basis for affirming the district court. Under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the states may not discriminate against aliens—documented or undocumented—without meeting the demands of strict scrutiny review. State laws discriminating against aliens are treated with skepticism because it is the purview of the federal government, not the state governments, to enact immigration policies. To survive strict scrutiny review, a state must identify a compelling government interest and then tailor the policy at issue precisely so that it advances that interest.

Acts 636 and 174 cannot hope to satisfy strict scrutiny review. The acts were apparently motivated by the legislature’s desire to “defend” Arkansas against perceived hostile foreign interests. But in the absence of a literal military invasion, national defense responsibilities rest exclusively in the federal government. In fact, both acts appear to be the product of nativist sentiments. As the sponsor of Act 636 put it, “If we don’t want a balloon flying over our nation, we shouldn’t want them owning land.” But neither nativism nor xenophobia is a legitimate state interest. And the statutes at issue create overbroad, slapdash categories of discrimination that harm aliens from two dozen countries—a legal framework untethered from any material harm those aliens might pose to state interests.

The laws, in short, constitute arbitrary class legislation—the very thing the Equal Protection Clause prohibits. The Court should reject the state’s effort to deprive aliens of their property rights and affirm the preliminary injunction blocking the law’s enforcement.