The State Department is appealing the ruling that ordered it to reopen the 2027 Diversity Visa lottery, and it has asked the trial court to pause that order while the appeal runs. The filings landed in San Diego on October 19 and 20, days before the first deadline the injunction set.
On October 19, the government filed a notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit from the preliminary injunction entered in Red Eagle Law, L.C. v. Rubio, No. 3:26-cv-04738-JO-VET. The same day it filed an emergency motion asking Judge Jinsook Ohta to stay the injunction, supported by declarations from Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Pike and John Armstrong. The Ninth Circuit opened the appeal on October 20 as case No. 26-6943, and its scheduling notice gives the government until November 17, 2026 to file its opening brief and Red Eagle Law until December 15, 2026 to answer; corporate disclosure statements are due November 3. On October 20 the government also asked the district court for more time to answer the complaint.
The injunction itself has not changed. As modified by the court on October 14, it requires the State Department to announce the DV-2027 registration period by midnight Eastern on October 29, 2026, to open registration by midnight Eastern on November 1, 2026 and keep it open for 30 days, and to notify selectees by midnight Eastern on December 3, 2026. On October 19 the court issued its full written opinion explaining the ruling, finding that the department had not held the lottery Congress requires for the 2027 fiscal year.
Whether those dates hold now depends on the stay request. A stay would suspend the injunction while the Ninth Circuit reviews it, which would leave the 2027 lottery closed for the time being; if the stay is denied, the October 29 and November 1 deadlines stand even as the appeal proceeds, because an appeal does not by itself pause a district court order. The district court docket showed no ruling on the stay motion as of the afternoon of October 21.
For readers on the employment-based side, none of this changes EB-2, EB-3 or EB-1 cutoff dates. The Diversity Visa program is a separate allocation of up to 55,000 immigrant visas a year, drawn by random selection rather than by employer petition, and its numbers are not counted against the employment-based categories. What the appeal decides is whether the 2027 drawing happens at all, and on what timetable: a successful stay would push any registration past the dates the court set, while an affirmance would leave the department with the schedule it was given.
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