The California Alien Land Law and the Fourteenth Amendment

HEPAST few years have seen a surge of, activity by California law-enforcement officers, aided by new state legislation and augmented appropriations, in the investigation of possible violations of the alien land law and the institution of escheat proceedings.By the summer of 1945 approximately thirty escheat actions had been begun, judgments in favor of the state had been entered in four of them, and out-of-court settlements of $100,000 and $25,000, respectively, had been effected in two others.'By the spring of 1946 some fifty actions were pending.All of these suits involved agricultural lands and were directed against persons of Japanese ancestry. 2Additional suits have since been filed.'The alien land law, first enacted in 1913, denies to aliens ineligible for citizenship the right to own, lease, or otherwise enjoy land, except to the extent provided by treaty. 4 Despite the manifest discrimination against one class of aliens and the deprivation of property rights involved, the United States Supreme Court in 1923 upheld the law, concluding that it did not violate the equal protection and due process guaranties of the Fourteenth Amendment. 5 The new wave of escheat actions has resulted in a new test of the law.Late in 1946, in an appeal from a judgment of escheat which again raised the equal protection and due process issues, the California supreme court reaffirmed the constitutionality of the law in People v. Oyama, 6 relying upon the rationale provided by the 1923 decisions.