University Groups File Immigration Lawsuit To Block Student Rule

ByStuart Anderson,
Senior Contributor.

Stuart Anderson writes about immigration, business and globalization.

Aug 18, 2026, 02:22pm EDT
Aug 18, 2026, 05:26pm EDT

Summary

University groups and labor unions have filed a lawsuit to block a new immigration rule limiting F-1 and J-1 international student and exchange visitor visas to fixed four-year periods. Finalized in July 2026 and effective September 15, the rule is part of the Trump administration's broader immigration restrictions. Plaintiffs argue it is "arbitrary and capricious," warning of severe economic and academic consequences, including reduced international student enrollment, weakened university finances and a loss of talent in critical fields. They contend the Department of Homeland Security's justifications, such as national security, rely on weak anecdotes and that the agency disregarded significant public comments. The lawsuit seeks to overturn the rule before its implementation.

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People walk on the UCLA campus on July 30, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. University groups have filed a lawsuit to block an immigration rule limiting F-1 and J-1 visa holders to fixed four-year periods. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
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University groups and labor unions have filed a lawsuit to block an immigration rule limiting F-1 and J-1 visa holders to fixed four-year periods. The final rule, published in July 2026, limits how long students can study in the United States without obtaining new permission from the U.S. government by eliminating the previous policy known as “duration of status.”
Today, international students are admitted for a time to pursue a course of study, meaning they can generally stay in the United States after entering as an undergraduate, going on to a master’s and then a Ph.D., without relying on new government approvals.
The new rule is part of the Trump administration’s policy to restrict all categories of legal immigration and certain temporary visa categories. The lawsuit seeks to overturn the rule before it is implemented.

Economists and educators say the administration’s final rule will reduce international student enrollment, weaken American universities’ finances and deprive companies of talent. President Trump has spoken about the benefits of international students to America, but that’s not reflected in the rule.
At U.S. universities, international students account for 80% of full-time graduate students in computer and information sciences, 75% in electrical and computer engineering, 62% in mathematics, and statistics and a majority in industrial engineering, civil engineering and mechanical engineering, according to National Science Foundation data.

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The plaintiffs in the case are the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration; NAFSA: Association of International Educators; Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts; American Federation of Teachers; Graduate Labor Organization, AFT Local 6516; The NewsGuild-CWA; International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America; and United Auto Workers Local 2322.
Dana McSherry and Paul Hughes of McDermott Will & Emery are counsel for the plaintiffs. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

“The rule will severely undermine the contributions international students make to U.S. campuses, economies and national security,” said Fanta Aw, executive director and CEO of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, in a statement.
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“We are going to court to protect international students and scholars and to defend our member institutions’ ability to educate, train, and retain them,” said Miriam Feldblum, president and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, in a statement.

Immigration Lawsuit Filed To Block Duration Of Status Final Rule

In a complaint and preliminary injunction motion filed on Tuesday, Aug. 18, plaintiffs ask for summary judgment and vacatur of the final rule. They argue the plaintiffs are likely to succeed and that the court should set aside the final rule.
“For more than four decades, ‘duration of status’ has been the cornerstone of the United States’ framework for admitting international students, as well as exchange visitors and representatives of foreign media,” the plaintiffs argue in their complaint. “Under this proven system, F, J, and I nonimmigrants may remain in the country for the length of their program, not some arbitrary fixed end date. This flexible approach has allowed the United States to stay competitive in the global marketplace for academic talent, and rescues universities and immigration officials from thickets of red tape.”
The plaintiffs state that the final rule “dismantles that framework, replacing duration of status with a rigid system of fixed admission periods arbitrarily capped at four years,” requiring “discretionary extensions of stay from an already overwhelmed federal immigration bureaucracy with no certainty that an extension necessary to complete the degree program they have invested in attaining will be granted.”
In its replies to comments in the Federal Register, DHS demonstrated the lack of certainty students should have about the ability to extend their stay beyond four years, writing, “Students who demonstrate continued academic progress and meet F-1 eligibility criteria may apply for an extension of status to complete their programs, consistent with the realities of U.S. higher education.” (Emphasis added.) DHS stated students “may apply for an extension,” but does not promise or provide regulatory language to indicate that they have a high probability of receiving one.
“The Final Rule takes a wrecking ball to many other provisions as well: it prohibits graduate students from changing academic programs, bars all students from pursuing degrees at the same or lower educational level after completing a prior degree, restricts transfers and program changes for undergraduates, and halves the post-completion grace period for F-1 students from 60 to 30 days,” according to the complaint.
The plaintiffs state that the changes will be “catastrophic for universities, international students and scholars, and the Nation as a whole.” The new rule “will discourage foreign students and other nonimmigrants from coming to the United States, repelled by the intolerable prospect of losing lawful immigration status partway through their studies.”
The complaint details the economic and other losses they expect the final rule to cause. They point to National Foundation for American Policy research by University of North Florida economics professor Madeline Zavodny that found, on average, for every one international undergraduate student enrolled at a public university, two additional U.S. students enroll as well. The complaint cites NFAP research that concluded approximately one-quarter of U.S. billion-dollar companies have at least one founder who entered as an international student. The plaintiffs also point to NAFSA research that found every three international students enrolled creates an additional U.S. job.
“Commenters warned that if the predicted decline in enrollment—or anything close to it—in fact occurred, the consequences would be catastrophic for institutions of higher education and the Nation as a whole,” according to the complaint. “NAFSA and many other commenters noted that a study by three immigration experts (the “Clemens study”) estimated that within 10 years of eliminating duration of status, the economic costs of eliminating duration of status would reach $72-145 billion annually, dwarfing the total costs DHS quantified in the Proposed Rule (and the Final Rule). NAFSA referenced another study by the same experts predicting that, because of the importance of STEM international students to the U.S. economy, eliminating duration of status would contribute (alongside other policy changes) to lost productivity growth amounting to $220–439 billion per year by year 10.” The studies referenced in the comment were by Michael Clemens, Amy Nice and Jeremy Neufeld.
DHS “acknowledge[d] that the rule may adversely affect U.S. competitiveness” but asserted that “DHS does not intend for the rule to cause significant impacts on enrollment,” according to the plaintiffs’ memorandum in support of its legal action. It cites case law to argue that it is “irrelevant” whether DHS intended to reduce enrollment significantly. The plaintiffs, citing earlier court decisions, state that “An agency … cannot simply state it ‘believes’ something to be true—against the
weight of all the evidence before it—without further support.” An agency also “cannot ignore evidence that undercuts its judgment; and it may not minimize such evidence without adequate explanation.”
The Arguments In The Immigration Lawsuit

Plaintiffs argue the final rule and the changes it enacts are “arbitrary and capricious,” making it unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act.
“They rest on purported justifications—national security concerns and preventing abuse of the system—that derive from scattered anecdotes and minuscule portions of the affected nonimmigrant population,” according to the complaint. “Simply put, DHS has failed to identify any concrete, systemic problem with the existing duration of status system that would justify a complete regulatory overhaul affecting more than two million nonimmigrants annually and likely to cost the Nation’s economy tens of billions of dollars each year.”
The plaintiffs assert that DHS’s cost-benefit analysis is “fundamentally defective” because the agency acknowledged billions of dollars in costs but identified no quantified costs over ten years. It instead described “the purported benefits of the rulemaking only qualitatively—likely because those supposed benefits, which are based on nothing more than anecdote and make little sense even on their own terms, would be dwarfed by even the acknowledged costs of the Final Rule.” The plaintiffs make a strong argument in noting, “DHS also refused to quantify—and therefore largely disregarded altogether—the greatest harm of the Final Rule: the foreseeable decline in international student enrollment.”
The complaint notes the administration received almost 22,000 comments. “Yet DHS’s responses to these comments were consistently conclusory, circular, and nonresponsive. That is, rather than the meaningful engagement with the regulated public and deliberative process mandated by the Administrative Procedure Act, DHS here appears to have engaged in an exercise of close-minded justification of a preordained result, batting away reams and reams of public commentary explaining why that result was misguided. But the APA demands more.”
The plaintiffs cite DHS’s use of anecdotes that ignore the limited scope of its examples and its unwillingness to implement less disruptive alternatives. “The National Foundation for American Policy likewise noted that DHS’s reference to a small subset of nonimmigrants—’2,100 aliens [which] would equal 0.067% of the estimated 3.1 million people who may have entered the United States as F-1 students on visas between 2000 and 2010’—is unreliable, particularly where ‘DHS does not allege these 2,100 students have violated the law but only ‘the spirit of the law,’” according to the complaint.
NFAP’s comment to the rule noted DHS could address longer-term students, to the extent they are an area of concern, by reviewing or requiring extensions for those in the United States for 8 or 10 years. NFAP noted this would address the issue DHS raised without burdening the other 99% of international students.
“Regarding DHS’s reliance on visa overstay rates to argue that eliminating duration of status was necessary, numerous commenters noted that the overstay rates of F, J, and I non-immigrants are low to begin with and that ‘DHS itself found that with more time to update records, the apparent ‘overstay’ numbers dropped dramatically; by 42% over a 15-month update period for F, J, M visas,’” according to the complaint.
The complaint notes, “Commenters also pointed out that DHS’s anecdotal examples were illogical. For instance, with respect to national security, the National Foundation for American Policy contended that ‘DHS’s argument is not credible’ as ‘[i]f individuals represent national security concerns, hoping that they apply for an extension after four years so that an immigration officer can review their application is a woeful or even absurd security measure. Under DHS’s reasoning, if the proposed rule is finalized, all a national security threat needs to do to avoid scrutiny is to complete their academic program quickly enough to prevent the need to file for an extension.’”
NFAP provided several alternatives that DHS could have considered to address national security concerns. These alternatives included using intelligence to engage in enhanced surveillance or verification of individuals it identifies as a concern, including checking the activities and academic progress of such individuals every 6 months. DHS can conduct interviews or liaise with campus personnel on an ongoing basis to ensure that concerns about individuals or countries of interest are addressed. DHS could develop a new interagency task force that includes the FBI to gather information on international students and exchange visitors for counterintelligence and counterespionage purposes, or to address other national security issues.
“These alternatives—and there are additional alternatives—would be more effective and are more plausible for addressing national security or fraud concerns than DHS relying on an adjudicator or other immigration specialist to review the academic progress of an international student or exchange visitor only if they request an extension of stay, which would likely be four years after individuals enter the United States,” noted the NFAP comment.
Other commenters echoed this point. “As another commenter put it: ‘a true threat actor could easily plan their activities within a 4-year window or file an extension with perfectly clean paperwork. Meanwhile, thousands of innocent students would be treated as potential threats by default,’” according to the complaint. “And one commenting college remarked: ‘It seems irrational that an F-1 visa holder seeking to harm U.S. national security would suddenly become a more significant danger after the four-year cap as opposed to posing a danger immediately upon entry.’”
The plaintiffs criticized DHS’s approach to comments. “In short, commenters addressed the few data points and anecdotes DHS offered to justify the Proposed Rule, and showed that each was lacking.”
“In response to all these points, DHS asserts simply that it broadly ‘disagrees with the general premise of these comments,’” according to plaintiffs. “DHS notes that it ‘provided specific examples of fraud, national security concerns, and nonimmigrant students remaining in the United States for lengthy periods of time under the D/S framework,’ but does not discuss commenters’ points that these anecdotes and data points are unsupportive. Again, DHS entirely failed to consider aspects of commenters’ objections and provide a reasoned and reasonable response.’”
A judge will need to issue a decision on the immigration lawsuit quickly if the rule is to be blocked before its effective date of Sept. 15.

University Groups File Immigration Lawsuit To Block Student Rule