A federal lawsuit filed Wednesday challenges Return to the Land, a whites-only Arkansas community, alleging violations of fair housing and civil rights laws. Plaintiff Michelle Walker, a St. Louis real estate broker, says she was rejected for membership due to her Jewish ancestry and interracial marriage, despite identifying as white and seeking an investment property.

Return to the Land, a 160-acre compound in Ravenden requiring members be white and heterosexual, argues its structure—a membership LLC with $6,600 shares for three acres—exempts it from discrimination laws. Legal scholars dismiss this, citing the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which contains no religious or associational carve-outs for private groups.

Represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Relman Colfax PLLC, Walker seeks a court order to halt the discrimination. The case tests whether the community's claimed right to free association supersedes established fair housing protections, with potential implications for similar nationalist movements gaining traction under current federal policies.