The plaintiff in the 2027 Diversity Visa case answered the government’s emergency request to pause the injunction on Monday, October 26, at 4:38 p.m. Pacific, inside the deadline the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had set for 5:00 p.m. that day. As of midday Pacific on Tuesday, October 27, the court had issued no order on the request: the response, docket entry 13 in No. 26-6943, is the newest entry on the appellate docket. The free version of that docket lists what was filed, not what it says, so the arguments Red Eagle Law, L.C. made on Monday are not publicly readable and are not described here.
What is being decided is timing, and the calendar is short. The amended injunction in Red Eagle Law, L.C. v. Rubio, No. 3:26-cv-04738-JO-VET, signed by Judge Jinsook Ohta on October 21, orders the State Department to announce the fiscal year 2027 registration period on its visas-news page by midnight Eastern on October 29, open registration by midnight Eastern on November 1 for thirty days, and notify selectees by midnight Eastern on December 3. That order adds one detail worth noting this week: the department may ask the district court for more time on the December 3 notification date, but it has to file that request by October 30, the day after the announcement is due.
The request to the Ninth Circuit followed a loss in the trial court. The department appealed on October 19 and asked Judge Ohta the same day to stay her injunction; she denied that motion on October 21. On October 23 the government filed an emergency motion for a stay pending appeal, with the certificate the circuit’s rules require for emergency relief, and that night the court directed Red Eagle Law to respond by Monday afternoon. The appeal itself continues on a separate track: the department’s opening brief is due November 17, the answering brief December 15, and both sides’ corporate disclosure statements November 3. A stay would lift the injunction’s obligations while the appeal is pending. Without one, they stand, and the October 29 announcement is two days away.
The Diversity Visa lottery is a separate pool of up to 55,000 visas a year, allocated by random selection among natives of countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States. Nothing in this case changes employment-based cutoff dates, and the November Visa Bulletin published this month is unaffected. What DV-2027 entrants are waiting on is the registration window itself, which the State Department must post on travel.state.gov if the injunction stays in force. The injunction speaks only to the fiscal year 2027 program.
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