Judge Davila gives 10 extra days in supplemental relief order

Today, September 30, 2026 — the last day of the Diversity Visa fiscal year — Judge Davila ordered the State Department to keep processing DV-2026 cases for ten more days. The deadline that normally ends every selectee’s chance at midnight has, for this year, been pushed back.

The order comes from Judge Edward J. Davila of the Northern District of California in Medani v. Trump, No. 5:26-cv-06332-EJD (ECF No. 137). It is not a reward or a general extension. It is a remedy for what the court found was the State Department’s slow and incomplete compliance with an injunction the court issued a month earlier. The ten days match the ten days the Department waited before telling its embassies and consulates to follow that injunction.

Here is what happened, what the court ordered, and what it could mean for DV-2026 selectees.

Background: why September 30 matters

The Diversity Visa program makes up to 55,000 immigrant visas available each fiscal year to lottery selectees. The catch is a hard deadline: a selectee’s eligibility ends on September 30 of their program year. A visa not issued by then is gone, and the selectee cannot simply carry it into the next year.

On August 28, 2026, Judge Davila issued a preliminary injunction that temporarily set aside two State Department policies, which the court calls the “DOS DV Pause” and the “DOS 75-Country Pause.” (It also set aside a USCIS policy, but plaintiffs say USCIS complied promptly, so this order does not concern it.) The injunction told the Department, to the extent practicable and in good faith, to take all reasonable steps for the rest of the fiscal year to:

• reconsider applications refused solely under either pause, and
• resume ordinary adjudication of pending applications.

The court also said it might grant more relief later, depending on how well the Department complied. That reservation is what made this new order possible.

A month of slow compliance

The court’s core finding is that the State Department lost most of September before it processed cases at a normal pace. The order walks through how that happened.

Ten days of silence. On September 8, plaintiffs filed an emergency motion. They said the Department had not scheduled a single consular interview for any plaintiff since the injunction and was cancelling September interviews already on the calendar. As late as September 1, a consular office in Taiwan emailed a class member that DV-2026 processing remained paused. The Department did not dispute that it had held no interviews and issued no visas. It said it had been drafting guidance on how to comply.

A cable sent the morning of the hearing. At the September 10 hearing, the Department’s lawyers told the court it had sent a cable to all posts that same morning. The cable told posts to begin reviewing cases refused under the pauses and to prioritize them. The court ordered the Department to file status reports every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, listing interviews held and visas issued and refused.

A new training requirement. The reports showed a crawl. Through September 21, the Department had decided 836 cases worldwide, about 83 a day (although many of those were 221g refusals which were actually cases the COs wanted to approve. By its own figures, it averaged about 230 a day in September 2025, which as I had shown, was mot a particularly busy month to compare. The Department attributed the slowdown to a new “training initiative” on public charge rules. Posts that had not completed the training were generally not allowed to process immigrant visas. The Department did not tell the court about this on its own; plaintiffs raised it.

A second hearing, then real progress. At the September 21 hearing, the Department said it had emailed all posts that morning reaffirming the injunction. After that, the pace rose sharply. By September 28, the Department had decided 3,814 cases, which the court put at roughly 272 a day. The court called this a significant improvement.

The share of decisions that were approvals rose along with the pace, though the order does not explain why.

What the court ordered

The court found the Department’s compliance “less than substantial” and said the delays “materially frustrated” the injunction. It credited the Department for its pace after September 21, but held that the earlier lost time needed a remedy. It chose ten extra days because that is how long the Department waited before instructing its posts.

The order requires that:

1. The Department, to the extent practicable and in good faith, take all reasonable steps for ten additional days past the 2026 fiscal year to reconsider FY-26 applications refused solely under the two pauses and resume ordinary adjudication of pending applications.
2. If the Department needs time to write guidance for posts, it must ask the court for a temporary stay rather than simply waiting.
3. The Department must promptly tell the court about any unforeseen problems affecting compliance.
4. Status reports continue every Monday, Wednesday and Friday by noon Pacific time until the extra period ends.
5. A status conference is set for October 15, 2026, at 10:00 a.m.

Points 2 and 3 respond directly to the court’s frustration. Twice, the Department stayed silent about a delay until plaintiffs brought it to the court. The new order turns those expectations into explicit requirements.

Why the court says it can extend the deadline

The hardest question in the order is whether a court may let the Department process Diversity Visas after September 30 at all. The government argued it cannot, citing the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Goodluck v. Biden, 104 F.4th 920 (D.C. Cir. 2024).

What Goodluck held. A district court had found that COVID-era processing pauses were unlawful and ordered unused Diversity Visas reserved for issuance after the fiscal year. The D.C. Circuit reversed. It held that the immigration statute and regulations fix September 30 as the cutoff, so a court cannot override it as an ordinary equitable remedy. Judge Davila agreed that the government’s point was well taken.

The door Goodluck left open. The D.C. Circuit noted that the plaintiffs there did not claim the government had violated the injunction. So it expressly did not decide what a court could do in a case of bad faith or undue delay in complying with a timely injunction. Judge Davila found this case is exactly that kind of case.

Inherent power to enforce orders. The court grounded its remedy not in its general equitable powers but in its long-recognized inherent authority to enforce its own orders. It was explicit that it was not holding the Department in contempt or imposing sanctions; it was compelling compliance. It also cited Ninth Circuit authority that a party can violate the spirit of an injunction even without breaking its literal terms.

Earlier cases. The court relied on two district court decisions that ordered Diversity Visa processing past the deadline after the government failed to meet a court order: Paunescu v. INS (N.D. Ill. 1999) and Przhebelskaya v. USCIS (E.D.N.Y. 2004). It acknowledged both predate Goodluck and were never reviewed on appeal.

The bottom line. If a court could never compel compliance past September 30, the government could run out the clock on any order. The court called that an absurd result that would leave the judiciary disarmed. It also noted that Goodluck is a D.C. Circuit case and does not bind courts in the Ninth Circuit.

What the court refused to do

The order grants the motion only in part. Plaintiffs asked the court to reserve every unused DV-2026 visa — roughly 40,000 — for issuance after the fiscal year. That is the same remedy Goodluck struck down.

The court declined. It found the request overbroad and untethered to the specific noncompliance at issue. It also pointed out that while Congress allots 55,000 Diversity Visas a year, the government has no obligation to issue that many. The court tied its remedy to the ten days actually lost, rather than to the number of visas left unused.

What this means for DV-2026 selectees

The order buys time, but not much, and it does not guarantee anyone a visa.

• Who is covered. In a footnote, the court said the certified subclasses encompass all FY-26 Diversity Visa applicants, pointing to plaintiffs’ claim that the policies together put an indefinite hold on all DV benefits. This means that plaintiffs in other cases such as Ivanov are covered by the class.
• What is covered. Reconsideration of cases refused solely under the DV Pause or the 75-Country Pause, and ordinary processing of pending cases. A case refused earlier in the year for another reason is not reopened by this order.
• How long. Ten days past September 30, which works out to roughly October 10, 2026. The order does not name an end date, so watch the docket and official notices. However, this 10 days will shift if the government ask for time to “organize” themselves and to instruct the embassies how to handle this work. I expect the government will ask for that time, so the 10 days will move to accommodate that need.
• What it does not promise. The Department must act “to the extent practicable and in good faith.” Every applicant must still be found eligible, and ten days is a short window for a worldwide backlog.

If you are a DV-2026 selectee with a pending or pause-based refusal, keep your documents current and respond to any consulate message quickly. An immigration attorney can tell you how the order applies to your case.

What comes next

The next fixed date is the October 15 status conference, by which point the ten-day window will have closed. The thrice-weekly status reports will show how many cases the Department actually decides in the extra time.

The larger open question is whether the order holds up. The government has already argued that Goodluck forbids processing past September 30, and it could seek a stay or appeal to the Ninth Circuit. That court has not ruled on the issue, and Goodluck does not bind it. However it comes out, this order is one of the first to test the question Goodluck left open: what a court may do when the government drags its feet on a timely injunction.

This post summarizes the court’s September 30, 2026 order (Case No. 5:26-cv-06332-EJD, ECF No. 137) and is not legal advice. Developments after that date are not reflected here.

The order itself is below if you would like to read it.