A federal appeals court has cleared the Trump administration to keep the 2027 Diversity Visa lottery closed, blocking a judge’s order that would have forced registration to open on Sunday.
A three-judge Ninth Circuit panel granted the State Department’s emergency request for a stay on Thursday, finding in a per curiam order that the government is likely to win its appeal.
The lottery awards up to 55,000 green cards a year to people from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. Roughly 100,000 people are normally selected at random to apply.
The State Department never opened registration for fiscal 2027, which effectively canceled the program. The administration suspended the lottery last December after a shooting suspect was found to have entered through it, Bloomberg Law reported.
Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at the time that the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings, a Portuguese national, had received a visa through the lottery. He was later found dead, the AP reported.
The December pause also froze visas for earlier lottery winners. A separate court order ended that freeze on Aug. 28, and the State Department resumed issuing those visas.
Law Firm Lacked Standing
The challenge came from Red Eagle Law, a San Diego immigration firm that represents lottery winners. It sued in August and was the only plaintiff, with no prospective visa applicants joining the case.
On Oct. 14, U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta ordered the State Department to announce a registration period by Oct. 29, open registration by Nov. 1 and notify winners by Dec. 3.
Judges M. Margaret McKeown, N. Randy Smith and Holly A. Thomas ruled that the firm’s business interest falls outside the “zone of interests” Congress meant to protect when it created the program.
“The Diversity Visa Program simply does not ‘directly rely on institutions like [Red Eagle] to aid immigrants,’” the order said, adding that the program was “enacted to encourage immigration, not generate revenue for law firms.”
The panel still declined to bless the administration’s approach. “We do not endorse the Department’s failure to open the lottery registration period,” the judges wrote.
The panel distinguished a 2018 Ninth Circuit ruling that let nonprofit legal groups challenge asylum rules, noting that the asylum law expressly mentions pro bono legal help while the lottery statute does not.
In a concurring opinion, Smith went further, writing that Red Eagle also lacks constitutional standing because its claimed harm depends on a chain of speculative events, starting with foreigners deciding to enter the lottery at all.
Smith noted that the government cannot be sued simply because someone believes it is breaking the law. Such problems, he wrote, are the responsibility of Congress or the president, as The Epoch Times also reported.
Smith described Red Eagle as “a boutique law firm in San Diego County” whose claimed injury rests on clients it might acquire someday if the lottery were held.
The stay remains in place while the appeal proceeds, and the court will set a briefing schedule. The ruling leaves the 2027 lottery shut for now, though future challenges by actual applicants remain possible.
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