Professor Behzadi Cárdenas Published on Structural Inequities in Copyright and Fair Housing Law

SAN DIEGO (May 6, 2024) -- This trimester, Emily Behzadi Cárdenas, Associate Professor of Law at California Western School of Law, has been actively publishing, with the release of an article and an essay. “National Security or National Origin? The Implications of Florida’s Alien Land Law Under the Federal Fair Housing Act” was published in the South Carolina Law Review, and Desettling Fixation was published in the North Carolina Law Review. In both works, Professor Behzadi Cárdenas employs her expertise in the intersections between property law, human rights, and social justice.

In “National Security or National Origin? The Implications of Florida’s Alien Land Law Under the Federal Fair Housing Act,” Professor Behzadi Cárdenas looks to expose the “illegality of the Florida Alien Land Law, and like legislation, under the Federal Fair Housing Act.” Florida’s New Alien Land Law, which Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law on May 8, 2023, prohibits property ownership or purchasing for individuals who are not U.S. citizens and who live in one of the law’s identified “countries of concern”: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba. In her essay, Professor Behzadi Cárdenas critically examines the legislation and the Federal Fair Housing Act, arguing that the new law’s “implementation and enforcement will not only be inherently discriminatory, but will also reverse decades of progress made in fair housing within the United States.”

In Desettling Fixation, Professor Behzadi Cárdenas tackles the question of copyright protection for ephemeral works of art, specifically those in communities of color. Recognizing the importance of such works for those communities that rely on “intangible cultural heritage,” Professor Behzadi Cárdenas “proposes a reformation of the ‘fixation’ requirement in American copyright doctrine, which requires a work to be ‘sufficiently permanent’ for a period of ‘more than a transitory duration.’” She argues that as currently configured, copyright law leads to “commodification and misappropriation” of intangible cultural heritage by dominant cultures and that through “the desettling of fixation in copyright law, true ‘progress’ can be realized.” 

Building on a comparative analysis of the fixation requirement in other countries, her article proposes a reformation of the “fixation” requirement in American copyright doctrine. By allowing authors to establish copyright in ephemeral works, communities may be able to protect more effectively their intangible cultural heritage from commodification and misappropriation. This article joins the call for reconsidering how copyright law reinforces structural inequities and proposes a novel solution. 

Read “National Security or National Origin? The Implications of Florida’s Alien Land Law Under the Federal Fair Housing Act” here.

Read Desettling Fixation here.