A Biden-appointed judge ordered Marco Rubio’s State Department to open the 2027 diversity visa lottery after a pause linked to a shooter who entered that way.
U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta granted a preliminary injunction Wednesday directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department to announce registration for the 2027 diversity visa lottery this week and run the program on a court-set schedule.
The order forces the department to reopen a green card lottery that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had paused after a Brown University shooter was identified as having entered the United States through the same program in 2017. Breitbart News reported the injunction sets hard deadlines for entries, notifications, and visa awards through the next fiscal year.
Ohta, a Biden appointee who immigrated from South Korea at age six, told the government it must open a 30-day electronic entry window by Oct. 18, notify selected applicants by Nov. 19, and keep processing visas until the 2027 allotment runs out or the fiscal year ends next September.
Congress created the diversity visa program in 1990 to award up to 50,000 immigrant visas a year to people from countries that send few immigrants to the United States. The lottery had been in limbo since December, when Noem halted it after the Brown University case.
The State Department resumed issuing diversity visas in August under a separate court order. A second federal judge in Northern California had already found the department delayed processing in a related case. Ohta’s new order goes further, compelling the executive branch to restart registration for the next cycle on the court’s clock.
Red Eagle Law, a Southern California immigration firm, filed the suit in July against Rubio. The firm argued the department’s failure to open 2027 registration was “arbitrary, capricious, and not in accordance with law” and amounted to a “de facto cancellation.” It said it lost clients because much of its practice involves lottery applicants.
"You’re asking me to demand that the government restart this program."
Ohta made that remark from the bench at an earlier hearing. Weeks before Wednesday’s injunction, she denied the same firm’s emergency bid and questioned whether she had the power to force the program open. She then reversed course and issued the preliminary injunction anyway.
The government argued the firm waited too long and that a statutory deadline had already passed. The court rejected that defense and locked in the registration timeline.
The injunction lands on Rubio’s desk as the Trump administration continues to fight court constraints on immigration enforcement. In a separate matter, a federal judge blocked the administration from deporting noncitizen students over Israel criticism, another example of the bench limiting executive action.
Rubio has also remained a high-profile figure in personnel and succession talk inside the administration. Recent coverage has tracked how Trump and Rubio weigh ambassador decisions and how Trump-world jockeying has cast Rubio against other 2028 names.
None of that personnel drama changes the core problem here. A single district judge is now dictating the calendar for a federal visa lottery that the executive branch paused for security reasons after a program beneficiary was linked to a campus shooting.
Noem’s pause followed the identification of the Brown University shooter as someone who entered through the diversity lottery in 2017. The program’s defenders call it a path for underrepresented nationalities. Critics see a low-scrutiny channel that can admit people the public later has reason to regret.
After Ohta’s order became public, an X post by Josh Gerstein drew dismissive replies. Commenters questioned whether a judge can direct the executive branch to run an administrative program. Others seized on the judge’s name and appointment history.
The firm’s July filing framed the missing registration window as unlawful inaction. The court accepted enough of that claim to issue a preliminary injunction with concrete dates: announce this week, entries by Oct. 18, selectee notices by Nov. 19, and processing through the fiscal year that ends next September.
Political chatter around Rubio has not slowed. Reports have floated that Trump reportedly settles on Vance in long-range succession talk, while other accounts still treat Trump’s 2028 blessing for Vance as unsettled. Those storylines sit beside the court fight, not above it.
What matters for the lottery is simpler. The executive paused a program after a security failure tied to a prior entrant. A Biden-appointed judge then ordered the State Department to reopen registration on a fixed schedule and keep awarding visas until the numbers or the fiscal year run out.
Lawful immigration requires clear rules and real screening. When courts treat a security pause as something to reverse on a plaintiff’s timetable, voters are left watching the bench, not the elected officials they hired to enforce the border and the visa system.