Liberal court delivers immigration win for Trump as judge warns of ‘floodgates’ if law firm succeeded

A Ninth Circuit panel in California, though it leans liberal, gave the Trump administration a win on Diversity Visa policy. By a 2-1 vote, it threw out an injunction from U. S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta that would have forced the State Department to start accepting entries for the 2027 lottery, which grants visas to about 55,000 people annually from countries with low immigration levels, according to Fox News.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio had announced in November that the intake would be postponed while the department made certain changes, and entries never opened. The immigration firm Red Eagle, whose clients take part in the lottery, sued over the delay. The appeals judges concluded the firm lacked standing, saying the program exists to promote immigration rather than to produce revenue for lawyers. They cautioned that accepting the firm's theory of harm would open the floodgates for lawyers to roam the country hunting for government misconduct.

Separately, the department indefinitely halted diversity visa issuance a month later.

Summarized by PolitiKool from Fox News’s reporting. Read the full story at Fox News →