A federal judge granted a nationwide injunction against the DHS rule ending "duration of status" for international students — hours before it was set to kick in on September 15.
Inside Higher Ed reported that U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV of the District of Massachusetts granted a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking the DHS rule we covered in July — the one ending "duration of status" and capping F-1 and J-1 student stays at four years. The ruling landed September 14, the day before the rule was scheduled to take effect, and blocks DHS and ICE from enforcing it while the underlying lawsuit continues.
The suit was brought by a coalition led by NAFSA: Association of International Educators and the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, joined by the American Federation of Teachers and several other unions and associations. In a 48-page order, Saylor found DHS violated the Administrative Procedure Act on multiple fronts: it ran what he called an "exceptionally short, and barely legal" 32-day comment period, received roughly 22,000 comments overwhelmingly opposed to the rule, then finalized it almost unchanged without meaningfully addressing those objections. He also wrote that DHS's national-security justification for skipping normal rulemaking scrutiny "borders on the absurd," and the Boston Globe noted he warned the framework it replaces could otherwise "be abused to punish those whose viewpoints or research are disfavored."
This is preliminary relief, not a final ruling — the next hearing in the case is set for October 2. For now, F-1 and J-1 students keep the old duration-of-status framework, meaning they remain in valid status for as long as they're enrolled, without the four-year expiration date the rule would have imposed.
We told international applicants in July to plan around a four-year clock. That advice isn't wrong yet — it's just paused. A single district judge's preliminary injunction is real relief, but it's not the end of the story: DHS can appeal, and the case itself isn't resolved until at least the October 2 hearing.
If you already picked schools partly on how clearly they could walk you through visa extensions, keep that list. The rule being blocked for now doesn't mean it's gone — it means the four-year cap isn't the thing to panic about this week. A program's international-student office competence is a good filter regardless of how this lawsuit ends.
The date that mattered all summer just came and went without the rule taking effect. The date that matters now is the next hearing. If you're deep in an application cycle with F-1 or J-1 status at stake, it's worth checking in with your target schools' international offices after that date rather than assuming this is settled.
Rules aimed at international students have moved fast and reversed just as fast this year — visa interview pauses, the original cap, disenrollments driven by fear of the cap, and now an injunction. If you're choosing between a U.S. offer and one abroad, treat the U.S. side's rules as more volatile than usual and weigh that volatility alongside program quality, not instead of it.
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