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Editor’s note, Oct. 29: The Ninth Circuit’s order has since become available. It is a stay pending appeal, which keeps the district court’s order on hold for the full appeal, not a short administrative stay. The court found that Red Eagle Law, the only plaintiff, likely cannot bring the case because a law firm falls outside the interests the diversity visa statute is meant to protect.
An appeals court has stopped the clock on the court-ordered DV-2027 lottery, and with no registration open, the 2027 green card lottery now depends on how long that pause lasts.
The DV-2027 lottery will not open on Nov. 1 as a federal judge had ordered, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted the government an emergency stay on Oct. 29, Bloomberg Law reported. The order came on the day the State Department was required to announce its registration period and three days before registration had to open, leaving the millions of people who enter the diversity visa lottery each year with no entry window and no new date.
Bloomberg Law is so far the only established outlet to report the stay, and the order itself was not publicly available for review. Its exact terms, including whether it is a short administrative stay while the judges consider the government’s motion or a stay that runs for the length of the appeal, could not be confirmed. The appeal is docketed in the Ninth Circuit as No. 26-6943.
What the stay freezes. U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta in San Diego ruled in October that the State Department’s open-ended suspension of the DV-2027 program was likely “arbitrary and capricious,” Newsweek reported, noting that the department “offered no reason” for turning a November 2025 postponement into an indefinite one. The schedule later approved in the case, which an immigration law firm brought in August, required the department to announce the entry period by Oct. 29, open online registration on Nov. 1 for 30 days and notify selectees by Dec. 3. The government filed its notice of appeal on Oct. 19 and asked for a stay, as reported here on Oct. 21. Every one of those dates is now on hold.
Why time is the whole fight in the DV-2027 lottery case
The diversity visa program has a hard expiration date written into the statute. A DV-2027 selectee can be issued a visa or approved for adjustment of status only through Sept. 30, 2027, the end of the fiscal year for which they were chosen. No court order can extend that cutoff. In a normal cycle, results come out in May, about 17 months before that cutoff, giving selectees time to file the DS-260, collect documents and get an interview. Ohta’s schedule had already cut that to under 10 months.
The practical effect of the stay is that each week it stays in place comes straight out of that shrinking window. A pause that lasts through full briefing and argument could leave too little of the fiscal year to run a real program, which would give the government most of what it wanted even if it eventually lost on the merits. That is why the stay ruling may matter more than the final appellate decision.
The stakes are large. Congress caps diversity visas at 55,000 a year. For DV-2026, the State Department reported 20,822,624 qualified entries and about 129,516 registered selectees, counting spouses and children, for an annual limit it put at about 51,850 visas. Because selection always outruns supply, a compressed calendar tends to mean more selectees who never reach an interview before the deadline, at a time when immigrant visa issuance has already fallen sharply.
The pause also lands as the program faces pressure from Congress. A House bill would repeal the diversity lottery outright, and the SMARTER Act would abolish it as part of a broader overhaul. Neither has passed, so the program remains law and the dispute stays in the courts. The full history of the case is in the reports on Ohta’s original injunction and the revised Nov. 1 deadline.
For would-be entrants, the bottom line is simple: there is no DV-2027 registration open today. When a window does open, official entry happens only through the State Department’s own E-DV site, dvprogram.state.gov, and any outside site or agent claiming to offer early or guaranteed entry should be treated with suspicion.
What to watch
- The stay’s terms: whether the Ninth Circuit’s order is temporary or lasts for the whole appeal, and any briefing schedule it sets.
- A State Department notice: any announcement on travel.state.gov about DV-2027 entry dates.
- Sept. 30, 2027: the statutory last day any DV-2027 visa can be issued, regardless of how the appeal ends.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- Bloomberg Law: Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery Can Remain Paused as US Appeals (Oct. 30, 2026)
- Newsweek: 2027 Green Card Lottery Reopening Faces Appeal (Oct. 21, 2026)
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, docket No. 26-6943 (CourtListener listing)
- U.S. District Court, Southern District of California: Order Granting Joint Motion to Modify Injunction, No. 3:26-cv-04738-JO-VET, Dkt. 23 (Oct. 14, 2026)
- U.S. Department of State: DV-2026 Selected Entrants (entries, registrants and annual limit)
- 8 U.S.C. 1151(e): 55,000 annual diversity visa limit and 8 U.S.C. 1154(a)(1)(I)(ii)(II): eligibility limited to the fiscal year of selection
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