House Bill 1, Senate Bill 88 protested Saturday at the Ohio Statehouse

Roughly 200 people gathered on the west plaza of the Ohio Statehouse Saturday afternoon to protest two bills that would place new restrictions on immigrants who seek to buy, or continue to own, land in the state. 

The protest was supported by 14 organizations and spearheaded by the Asian American Coalition of Ohio (AACO). Its chair, Vincent Wang, said that if passed, these bills would impact residents across Ohio.

HB 1 and SB 88, both titled the Ohio Property Protection Act, would amend the Ohio Revised Code surrounding property ownership that prevents businesses or agents of “foreign adversaries”—a list of countries that includes China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela—to purchase land within 25 miles of a military establishment or other “protected property or critical infrastructure” in the state, to include residents of Ohio who are immigrants from those countries and not United States citizens, according to the bills.

In initial committee testimony the Senate bill’s sponsor in February, Sen. Terry Johnson, R-Portsmouth, said it would “blanket the entirety of the State of Ohio.”

Additionally, SB 88 would require affected property owners to divest from their land and property within two years of the law going into effect.

These bills are similar to those passed in two other states. Texas’s bill seamlessly went into effect on Sept. 1 and Florida’s passed but has been blocked by the court of appeals since then. 

Courtlyn Roser-Jones, an associate professor of law at the Ohio State Moritz College of Law, said that the bills have a number of flaws that leave them open for court challenges. 

Roser-Jones said one flaw is a strict scrutiny test under the equal protection clause, which protects individuals from discrimination on the basis of race or national origin, as well as preemption, which would rule that the legislation would fall under the federal government rather than individual states.

“The law should fail under equal protection, and I think probably would if just done on a blanket challenge based on the way that it’s drawn,” Roser-Jones said.

The bill’s definition of “critical infrastructure” includes any land within 25 miles of a military establishment, but Roser-Jones said it also includes railroads, power infrastructure and airports, which would include a majority of the state’s land.

“That’s everything in Ohio. So essentially, this law is, for all intents and purposes, saying that if you are a lawful resident here from China, you can’t own property in Ohio,” Roser-Jones said.

Despite significant concerns about the bills, they may still become law if not properly challenged, Roser-Jones said.

“So obviously there’s that loophole and there’s that chance that maybe this could become law, and could be law until it gets challenged again,” Roser-Jones said.

In written testimony, Johnson introduced this bill to protect the “American way of life.” He did not respond to The Lantern’s request for comment before publication.

“I introduced this bill because I strongly believe that Ohio’s land should not be for sale to those who seek to destroy the American way of life,” Johnson said in his written testimony in first hearing on February 26. “The People’s Republic of China – Communist China – has not hidden the fact that their goal is not just to outcompete and outperform the United States; it is to eventually rule the world.”

Johnson also said in the first hearing that by allowing “enemies of our country” to purchase land near Air Force bases or other critical infrastructure is a mistake. 

“Our land is currently up for grabs by those who want to cause us harm, endangering our national secrets,” Johnson said. “China is the most clear and present danger at this moment in time, but this legislation would protect against these threats from any adversarial nation (Iran, North Korea, Russia, and so on) along with terrorist groups, cartels, and more.”

As protestors gathered in front of the William McKinley monument outside the statehouse, 15 speakers addressed the crowd over a loudspeaker. 

“You’re going to be hearing from speakers today sharing their powerful personal experiences to explain why SB 88 and HB 1 are so very wrong and should be withdrawn,” Mia Lewis, the associate director at Common Cause Ohio, a nonprofit organization that encourages citizen participation in democracy and one of the co-sponsors of the event, said.

Over the next hour, individuals from different organizations across Ohio came up and spoke, calling the bills unconstitutional.

“I stand here today because I need the world to know that HB 1 and SB 88 are unconstitutional,” Hong Qiu of the AACO said. “The 14th Amendment promises equal protection under the law to every person in this country, no matter where they came from. When a law says people from certain countries cannot own a home, that is discrimination, plain and simple.”

Others made comparisons within American history of discrimination and violence against immigrants and foreigners, such as the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during the second world war.

“For 40 years after World War II Japanese Americans lived under the pretense that their mass incarceration was necessary for national security, this was entirely untrue,” Donald Hayashi, president of the Dayton chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, a national organization for protecting the rights of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and co-sponsor of the event, said. 

Hayashi said history cannot repeat.

“We cannot allow similar false invocations of national security to once again deny a community of their right to due process,” Hayashi said.

Carlen Zhang-D’Sousa, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, said that she hopes legislators will change their minds. She called the bills shameful and profoundly unfair.

“They’re not even trying to hide it anymore,” Zhang-D’Sousa said. “[These bills] reek of racial animus and bigotry, they are so obviously anti-immigrant, they single out certain minorities and say that they can’t have this thing that everyone else gets to have, for really no reason. It’s disgusting, but it’s not surprising.”

One legislator was in attendance however, near the end of the speaker’s presentations, Ohio Senator Hearsel Craig briefly addressed the crowd.

“The Asian community has contributed to our nation significantly,” Craig said. “I just want to make sure that we have the kinds of rights that are fair and equitable to them.”

Craig said that he hopes the bills can be amended so that there are no unintended consequences and that “[we] honor the families and the children that are here and contributing significantly to our state.” He plans to continue working across the aisle on amending legislation.

“We’re always looking to make certain that [laws are] fair and there is equity for all of our citizens,” Craig said.

Wang said that these bills would impact the Ohio State community as well. According to Ohio State’s 15th day enrollment report, the university has 5,996 international students, and 3,226 are from China. 

Wang said that legislation like this leads to fear of coming to Ohio on a student visa.

“T[hese] bill[s] directly impacts international students at Ohio State and it will impact international faculty and staff, those people who originally came from overseas,” Wang said. 

This diversion of international students and faculty would have a negative financial impact on Ohio State. Wang said international students from China contribute $262,374,882 in paid tuition.

“Imagine all these students [if] they said, ‘Okay, I’m going to transfer to Canada or Australia or I’ll go back to China,’” Wang said. “If you look at total international students, [they] contributed close to half a billion dollars in revenue to Ohio. So there’s a tangible economic impact here.”

But international students aren’t the only ones with an interest in stopping HB 1 and SB 88, students who are children of immigrants are also concerned.

“That profiling just based on national origin is such an injustice, the forced selling [of property] is terrible, it’s just a blatant violation of rights,” Owen Laib, a fourth-year in chemistry who attended the protest with his parents, said.

Laib said how his foreign mom reacted to the bills.

“My mom is Chinese and when she heard about this bill, it definitely scared her and she was very struck by the language,” Laib said.

One of the proponents of the bill, Evan Callicoat, director of state policy for the Ohio Farm Bureau, testified on March 25, said that “land owned by foreign adversaries is only the latest threat to protecting farmland not just in Ohio but across the country.”

House Bill 1 and Senate Bill 88 can be found in full on the Ohio Legislature website.

The article was corrected at 1:21 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 30 to correct the number of protesters and clarify that SB 88 is the only bill that requires affected existing owners to sell their property.