A federal judge in the Northern District of California granted a preliminary injunction on August 7, 2026 barring the State Department from applying its nationality-based immigrant visa pause to the plaintiffs in Sayani v. Rubio. It is the second federal court in roughly a week to rule against the policy, and it carries a remedy the first decision did not.
The policy at issue is the January 2026 directive instructing consular officers to refuse immigrant visas to nationals of 75 listed countries while the department developed additional screening tied to public-benefits dependency. In late July, Judge Amit Mehta of the D.C. district court held in De Moura Gomes v. Rubio that the directive exceeded the Secretary of State’s authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act, because it compelled refusals even where a consular officer found no individualized basis to deny the visa. That ruling, however, ordered relief for a single plaintiff.
The Sayani order extends the pattern without yet universalizing it. The injunction protects the named plaintiffs rather than every affected applicant, so nationals of the 75 countries still should not expect their cases to resume automatically. What makes it consequential is the second half of the order: the court also addressed documents that expired while applicants sat in government-imposed limbo. Medical examinations and supporting civil documents that lapsed because of the freeze are covered by the relief.
That detail solves a problem the first ruling left open. Immigrant visa medical exams are valid for a limited period, and applicants frozen for months often found that winning the legal argument still left them paying for a new I-693 examination, new police certificates, and in some cases new affidavits of support. A court order that restores those documents means the remedy is worth something practical rather than merely symbolic.
Taken together, the two decisions establish that judges in two separate districts — one in Washington and one in California — have now found the freeze legally indefensible. Neither has vacated it nationwide. The government retains the ability to appeal, and until an appellate court or a class-wide order arrives, relief remains something applicants have to go to court to obtain individually.
For anyone stalled under the freeze, the realistic reading is this: the legal ground has shifted meaningfully in applicants’ favor, and Sayani shows courts are willing to address the collateral damage of expired paperwork alongside the underlying refusal. Those with strong equities and stalled cases may want to discuss individual litigation options with counsel rather than waiting for a broader remedy that has not yet materialized.
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Source: Sayani v. Rubio (N.D. Cal.)