Texas Just Banned Adversary Nations From Buying Land Here. Expect a Lawsuit.

A parcel of Texas farmland sits near a military installation. Who owns it matters more than most transactions ever do. SB17 says governments, companies, and agents connected to China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea can’t be the answer to that question, and Texas should expect to defend that position in court.

Signed June 20, 2025, effective September 1, 2025, SB17 went through a full conference committee, with the Senate adopting the final report 23-8 and the House 85-57.

Governmental entities of a designated country. Companies headquartered in, controlled by, or majority-owned by one. Individuals domiciled in a designated country, acting as its agent, or belonging to its ruling political party. That’s the reach. U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents are completely exempt, no matter their national origin, and so are companies majority-owned by them. A citizen of a designated country who’s lawfully living in Texas can still buy a home to actually live in.

This isn’t drawn from speculation. The bill’s own findings section quotes the U.S. Director of National Intelligence’s 2025 Annual Threat Assessment directly, naming these four countries as documented national security risks. That’s the strongest foundation a bill like this can have, and it’s the same evidentiary basis Texas built its foreign-adversary-agent criminal statute on this same session.

The attorney general investigates and can force a court-ordered sale of illegally acquired property through a receiver. An individual violator faces a state jail felony. A violating company faces a civil penalty of the greater of $250,000 or half the property’s value. A violation doesn’t automatically void the underlying sale or harm an innocent third-party buyer down the line, keeping the penalty aimed at the actual bad actor.

Florida’s 2023 SB 264 faced this same kind of challenge in Shen v. Simpson. In November 2025, a divided Eleventh Circuit panel let the law stand. The court didn’t reach the merits of the core purchase restriction. It ruled the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge it, because Florida law found each of them domiciled in Florida rather than China, despite living there on temporary visas. Two narrower provisions, a property-registration requirement and a buyer’s affidavit, did get a merits ruling. The court upheld both under rational-basis review instead of the strict scrutiny the plaintiffs wanted. The plaintiffs dropped their remaining claims after the ruling, and the Fifth Circuit, which covers Texas, still hasn’t ruled on a law like this one.

SB17’s drafting, tying the country-designation process to an existing intelligence framework, exempting lawful residents outright, requiring proof of actual government or party affiliation rather than a blanket nationality ban, tracks the deferential legal standard Florida’s law just survived. That makes this bill comparatively well-positioned. It doesn’t make it litigation-proof.

A well-documented, carefully exempted national-security measure that doesn’t burden Texans or lawful residents of any national origin. Support it, and expect a legal challenge, the same one every comparable state law has faced.

This is our read of the bill. We encourage you to read it yourself and reach your own conclusions.