The Porterfield et al. v. Webb, Attorney General of the State of California, et al., 1923 case was a challenge to the Alien Land Law enacted by California in 1913 and amended in 1920. The law prohibited "aliens ineligible for citizenship" (primarily Asian immigrants) from owning agricultural land or possessing long-term leases over it but allowed them to lease land annually. In this case, two Japanese individuals who had leased farmland argued that these laws violated their rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and were discriminatory based on race. However, the Supreme Court upheld these laws as constitutional with a unanimous decision stating that states have broad power over property within their borders and can regulate its use and transfer as they see fit unless such regulation is clearly arbitrary or unreasonable. They reasoned that since federal immigration law at that time barred most Asians from becoming citizens due to racial restrictions on naturalization, it was not unreasonable for states like California to restrict property ownership accordingly.

In the dissenting opinion for Porterfield et al. v. Webb, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., joined by Justices Louis Brandeis and Harlan Fiske Stone, argued that California's Alien Land Law of 1920 did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause or infringe upon federal jurisdiction over immigration matters as claimed by plaintiffs. The law prohibited "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning agricultural land in California - a provision primarily targeting Japanese immigrants who were barred from naturalization under federal law at that time. Holmes contended that states have broad authority to regulate property within their borders and this regulation was merely an exercise of such power rather than an attempt to control immigration policy which is indeed a federal prerogative. He also dismissed claims of racial discrimination, asserting that distinctions based on eligibility for citizenship are legally permissible.