The fight against a Florida law restricting property purchases by Chinese citizens may hinge on finding new challengers – and on persuading a conservative judiciary unlikely to reverse course, legal experts say.

The primary obstacle going forward is that the judges are conservatives intent on getting an outcome that furthers their political priorities, according to Bob Jarvis, a professor of law at Nova Southeastern University who is not involved in the case.

“They bent over backwards to get this result,” he said, noting that two of the three Atlanta judges, both appointees of Republican President Donald Trump, resurrected a 1920s precedent restricting non-citizens from owning land that many legal experts had assumed to be “dead”.

Jarvis added that he was “stunned” by the ruling for a case that he initially expected to be a “slam dunk” for the plaintiffs.