Ninth Circuit Stay of October 29 Keeps DV-2027 Green Card Lottery Registration Closed: No New State Department Date, Annual Cap of 55,000 Visas
Washington — Registration for the U.S. Department of State's Diversity Visa program for fiscal 2027 (DV-2027), commonly known as the green card lottery, remains closed. On October 29, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stayed a district court's preliminary injunction that would have required the State Department to reopen registration, so the court-set timetable no longer binds the Department while the appeal proceeds.
The procedural history is as follows. On October 14, U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta of the Southern District of California issued a preliminary injunction in Red Eagle Law v. Rubio (No. 26-cv-4738), ordering the Department to publish the registration dates by October 29, open online entries by midnight Eastern Time on November 1 for 30 days, and notify selectees by December 3. The Ninth Circuit's October 29 stay suspended all three deadlines. The court said the government is likely to succeed on appeal because the law firm that brought the case is not among those whose interests the Diversity Visa statute protects, while adding that it does not endorse the Department's failure to open registration.
The Diversity Visa program makes up to 55,000 immigrant visas available each year to people born in countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. The DV-2027 visa period runs from October 1, 2026, to September 30, 2027, but the registration period that would normally have opened in the fall of 2025 never opened. In a notice dated November 5, 2025, the State Department said it was changing the entry process and would announce registration and results dates as soon as practicable; no dates have followed.
Next steps are set by the appeal schedule: the government's opening brief is due November 17, 2026, and the firm's answering brief is due December 15, 2026. The official entry site is dvprogram.state.gov; as of November 4, it was not accepting entries, and the Department has announced no new registration date.
来源链接： https://www.grapelaw.com/blog/us-immigration/dv-2027-green-card-lottery-court-order ； https://www.lawfirm4immigrants.com/dv-2027-green-card-lottery-start-date/
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Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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