The 2027 Green Card lottery will not open on November 1 after all. On Thursday, October 29, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted the federal government's emergency request for a stay, pausing a lower court's order that would have forced the U.S. Department of State to reopen registration for the fiscal year 2027 Diversity Visa programme. The ruling, in Red Eagle Law, L.C. v. Rubio, Ninth Circuit No. 26-6943, means the November 1 opening deadline is no longer enforceable while the government's appeal proceeds, and no new registration date has been announced.
Source: Bloomberg Law
The panel — Judges M. Margaret McKeown, N. Randy Smith and Holly A. Thomas — found that the government is likely to succeed on the merits because Red Eagle Law, the immigration firm that brought the case, is likely outside the zone of interests protected by the Diversity Visa statute and therefore likely has no cause of action. In a concurring opinion, Judge Smith wrote that the firm additionally lacks Article III standing to challenge the government's decision.
Source: Bloomberg Law
"We do not endorse the Department's failure to open the lottery registration period," the per curiam opinion said. "Nevertheless, Red Eagle has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits because it is not within the zone of interests of the statute and does not have a cause of action."
How this case reached the appeals court
This is a follow-up to the earlier development in this case. Red Eagle Law sued the State Department in August 2026 after the department failed to open registration for the FY2027 programme. On October 14, U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta of the Southern District of California issued a preliminary injunction requiring the government to announce the registration period by October 29, begin registration by November 1 and notify selected applicants by December 3. Awaaz Punjab reported that lower-court order when it was issued. The government appealed and asked the Ninth Circuit to suspend the order while the appeal is heard — and on October 29, the same day the announcement deadline fell due, the appeals court granted that emergency stay.
Source: Qazinform
What the Diversity Visa programme is — and why it was paused
The Diversity Visa programme, widely known as the Green Card lottery, makes up to 55,000 immigrant visas available every year to people from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States. Winners are selected by random drawing and, if they complete consular processing, can live and work permanently in the United States. According to Bloomberg Law, the Trump administration suspended the programme last December after a Portuguese national who had received a visa through the programme was suspected of killings in two separate shootings in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The State Department then did not open the FY2027 registration period at all, which is what prompted Red Eagle Law's lawsuit arguing that the failure effectively cancelled the programme.
The Ninth Circuit was explicit about what its order does and does not do. It does not abolish the Diversity Visa programme, it is not a final decision on the appeal, and it does not hold that the State Department acted lawfully in failing to open registration — the judges said the opposite about their own view of that failure. What the stay does is remove the court-imposed timetable: the department is no longer compelled by Judge Ohta's injunction to announce dates by October 29 or open applications by November 1.
What this means for applicants, including Punjabi and Indian readers
For prospective applicants there is, today, no way to enter DV-2027 and no confirmed date to wait for. The official entry system is not accepting entries, the appeals court's order sets no replacement date, and the State Department has not announced a new registration timetable. Readers should be alert to a predictable risk in this gap: unofficial websites and agents charging fees to 'register' people for a lottery that is not open. The genuine Diversity Visa entry has historically been free and made only through the State Department's official E-DV system during an announced entry period — paying an agent cannot create an entry while registration is closed.
The practical position for families in Punjab and in the diaspora who follow this route is therefore to wait for two things: a briefing schedule and decision in the Ninth Circuit appeal, which the court's clerk is to issue in due course, or a voluntary announcement by the State Department of a registration period. Until one of those happens, DV-2027 remains paused by court order, and any claim that registration has secretly opened should be checked against the State Department's official channels before any money changes hands.
What happens next
The appeal of the preliminary injunction now proceeds on a briefing schedule to be issued by the Ninth Circuit clerk. If the government ultimately wins on standing and zone-of-interests grounds, this particular lawsuit cannot force the lottery open, though the underlying question of whether the department may simply not run a programme Congress created could be raised by a different plaintiff. If the stay is later lifted or the injunction upheld, the October 14 deadlines would have to be revisited by the district court. For now, the verified position is narrow and clear: the order to reopen has been paused, the programme itself has not been abolished by this ruling, and there is no registration date.