Motahari v. Blinken
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:23-cv-07608
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 6
In Motahari v. Blinken, Judge Schofield granted dismissal of a challenge seeking faster action on Mahmoud Motahari’s visa application.
Farzaneh Motahari and Mahmoud Motahari were affected because the court did not order the government to complete or decide Mahmoud’s visa application; the defendants’ motion to dismiss was granted.
What happened
In Motahari v. Blinken, Farzaneh Motahari and her father, Mahmoud Motahari, asked the court to require the government to finish processing and decide Mahmoud’s immigrant-visa application. Mahmoud’s application had remained in administrative processing after a visa interview and additional security screening.
The court applied the rule that courts generally cannot review consular officers’ visa decisions. It rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that this rule should not apply to claims about delayed visa processing, reasoning that ordering the government to move the application forward would interfere with the visa process. The court also said the claims would be dismissed for failure to state a claim if the rule did not apply.
Judge Lorna G. Schofield granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss, denied the plaintiffs’ request for oral argument as moot, and directed the Clerk of Court to close the motion and the case.
The detailed version
- Motahari v. Blinken · No. 1:23-cv-07608
- Lorna Schofield
- June 26, 2024
Background
Farzaneh Motahari and her father, Mahmoud Motahari, brought an action under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Mandamus Act. Farzaneh is a U.S. citizen, and Mahmoud is a citizen of Iran. Farzaneh filed family-based visa petitions for her parents. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved those petitions and sent them to the National Visa Center for processing. Mahmoud later submitted an immigrant-visa application and attended an interview at the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan, Armenia.
After the interview, Mahmoud’s visa remained in administrative processing. The government stated that the consular officer refused the visa under 8 U.S.C. § 1201(g) so that additional security screening could occur, and that the embassy received Mahmoud’s answers to supplemental visa questions. The plaintiffs alleged that the delay was unreasonable and asked the court to order the defendants to complete the processing and decide Mahmoud’s application.
Defendants’ motion
The defendants moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), which addresses a court’s subject-matter jurisdiction, and Rule 12(b)(6), which addresses whether a complaint states a legally sufficient claim.
Court’s reasoning
The court granted the motion based on the doctrine of consular nonreviewability. That doctrine generally prevents courts from reviewing a consular officer’s decision to deny a visa. The court explained that most courts in the Second Circuit had applied the doctrine when applicants sought an order compelling the government to adjudicate a visa application.
The plaintiffs argued that a claim challenging delay was different from a claim challenging a visa denial. The court rejected that distinction, concluding that both a negative decision and a postponed decision could result in no visa, and that ordering the government to move the application forward would interfere with the visa-issuing process. The court also stated that, to the extent the doctrine did not bar the claims, the claims would be dismissed for failure to state a claim, for substantially the reasons given in the defendants’ briefing.
Disposition
The court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss. It denied the plaintiffs’ request for oral argument as moot and directed the Clerk of Court to close the motion and the case. The opinion did not state that the dismissal was with or without prejudice.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.