Judge orders State Department to open 2027 green card lottery

A federal judge in California has ordered the State Department to open the 2027 Diversity Visa lottery on a court-set schedule, complete with deadlines for registration, selection and processing. Judge Jinsook Ohta's preliminary injunction, issued Wednesday, directs Secretary of State Marco Rubio to announce the registration period this week, open a 30-day electronic entry window by October 18, and notify selected applicants by November 19. Visas must then be processed until the 2027 allotment runs out or the fiscal year expires next September.

The lawsuit was filed in July by Red Eagle Law, a Southern California immigration firm whose practice depends heavily on lottery applicants and which told the court it had lost clients during the suspension. The firm argued the department's failure to open registration was 'arbitrary, capricious, and not in accordance with law' — a de facto cancellation of a program Congress created in 1990. Government lawyers countered that the statutory deadline had already passed and that the firm had sued too late.

The program distributes up to 50,000 immigrant visas annually to nationals of countries that send few immigrants to the United States, with a high school education sufficing as a qualification. Homeland Security Secretary Kristiem Noem paused the lottery in December after it emerged that the Brown University shooter had entered the country through the program in 2017. The State Department resumed issuing diversity visas in August under a separate court order, and a second federal judge in Northern California has found the department delayed processing in a related case.

The ruling marks a reversal for Ohta herself: weeks earlier she denied an emergency bid from the same firm, questioning from the bench whether she had the power to demand the government restart the program. The department, the plaintiffs and now two judges have spent months litigating whether an administrative lottery must run — while the underlying statute sits untouched on the books.

The mechanics matter more than the personalities. A single immigration firm, its client base at stake, sued a cabinet secretary over a registration window and won. Judges now set the calendar for a federal visa program. The pause that followed a mass shooting was undone not by legislation but by injunction, and the program's annual 50,000 visas remain legally mandated regardless of who occupies the White House. Congress could repeal the lottery in an afternoon; instead it will run on court order.