Rennie v. McCarthy
Garmai Rennie v. Evan McCarthy, Director, National Visa Center; Joseph Zadrozny, Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy, Monrovia, Liberia; Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of State; Joseph B. Edlow, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; Todd Blanche, U.S. Attorney General; and Markwayne Mullin, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security
- Katherine Menendez
- 0:24-cv-04125
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 14
Counsel of record per CourtListener. Firm names are approximate.
In Rennie v. McCarthy, Judge Menendez ruled that a son's visa must be reclassified as an immediate-relative visa using his statutory age, not biological age, under immigration law.
U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who filed visa petitions for minor children and later naturalized while the petition was pending — particularly where the child reached age 21 before the sponsor naturalized. This ruling, following four federal appeals courts, holds that the government must use the statutory age formula (which subtracts government processing time) rather than biological age when determining whether such a child qualifies for an immediate relative visa.
What happened
In Garmai Rennie v. Evan McCarthy et al., a naturalized U.S. citizen sued federal immigration officials after the government recategorized her son Jackson Fumbah's pending visa application in a way that placed him in a slower visa line. Ms. Rennie had filed the visa petition for her son when she was a lawful permanent resident and he was 17 years old. After she became a citizen, officials recategorized his visa from an F2A (minor child of a permanent resident) to an F1 (adult child of a citizen), which added significant waiting time rather than making him immediately eligible for a visa.
The core legal dispute was whether the federal immigration statute's reference to 'the age of the alien on the date of the parent's naturalization' means the child's biological age or a specially calculated 'statutory age' that subtracts the time the government spent processing the visa petition. All four federal appeals courts that had addressed this question had concluded that 'age' in this context means the statutory age, protecting children who would otherwise 'age out' of faster visa categories because of government processing delays. The government argued that the doctrine of consular nonreviewability — a rule that courts generally cannot second-guess visa denials by consular officers — also barred the lawsuit entirely.
Judge Katherine M. Menendez rejected the government's consular nonreviewability argument, finding that a visa recategorization is not the same as a visa denial and is therefore subject to court review. On the merits, she agreed with the four appeals courts that the statute requires use of the statutory age formula. She granted Ms. Rennie's motion for summary judgment, denied the government's motion for summary judgment, and ordered officials to reclassify the application as one for an immediate relative visa.
The detailed version
- Rennie v. McCarthy · No. 0:24-cv-04125
- Katherine Menendez
- Aug. 5, 2026
Background
Plaintiff Garmai Rennie is a naturalized U.S. citizen who, while still a lawful permanent resident (LPR), filed a Form I-130 (Petition for Alien Relative) with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on April 13, 2020, seeking an immigrant visa for her son, Jackson Fumbah, who was then 17 years old. USCIS took 1,088 days to approve the petition, and by the time it was approved on April 26, 2023, Mr. Fumbah was 20 years old. His application was categorized as an F2A visa — for minor children of LPRs.
Ms. Rennie became a U.S. citizen on September 21, 2023, at which point Mr. Fumbah was biologically over 21. On October 1, 2024, the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia notified Mr. Fumbah that his visa category had been changed from F2A to F1 — the category for adult (over 21) children of U.S. citizens — which carried a significantly longer wait. Had he remained categorized as an F2A converting to an immediate relative (IR) visa, he would have been eligible immediately.
Ms. Rennie filed this action on November 5, 2024, alleging the reclassification violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). She sought a declaration that the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA) requires Defendants to categorize Mr. Fumbah's application based on his statutory age, not his biological age. The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment.
Legal Framework
Family-Based Visas and the Aging-Out Problem
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), U.S. citizens and LPRs may petition for immigrant visas for family members. IR visas — for unmarried children under 21 of citizens — are not subject to an annual quota and are processed without significant delay. By contrast, F1, F2A, and F2B visas are subject to annual numerical limits, creating long queues measured in years. Because a beneficiary's age historically was determined at the time a visa became available, many children who were minors when petitions were filed had 'aged out' of faster visa categories by the time their turn came.
Child Status Protection Act (CSPA)
In 2002, Congress passed the CSPA to address the aging-out problem. The CSPA established a 'statutory age' formula under 8 U.S.C. § 1153(h)(1): a beneficiary's age for visa classification purposes equals their biological age when a visa number becomes available, minus the number of days USCIS spent processing the petition. A separate provision, 8 U.S.C. § 1151(f)(2), addresses the specific scenario where an F2A petition (for a minor child of an LPR) is converted to an IR petition because the sponsoring parent naturalizes. That provision states the age determination 'shall be made using the age of the alien on the date of the parent's naturalization.' The central legal question in this case is whether 'age' in § 1151(f)(2) means biological age or statutory age under the § 1153(h)(1) formula.
Analysis
Consular Nonreviewability
Defendants argued that the doctrine of consular nonreviewability — a rule barring judicial review of a consular officer's visa denial — precluded the court from reviewing the recategorization decision. Judge Menendez rejected this argument. She adopted the First Circuit's reasoning in Teles de Menezes v. Rubio, 156 F.4th 1 (1st Cir. 2025), that a recategorization is not the functional equivalent of a visa denial. The court noted that the government had already determined Mr. Fumbah is admissible; only the classification of his visa was at issue. The court also noted that two district court cases Defendants cited in support of applying consular nonreviewability to recategorizations were decided before the Supreme Court clarified in Department of State v. Muñoz, 602 U.S. 899 (2024), that the doctrine is non-jurisdictional, and that those earlier courts had incorrectly treated the doctrine as jurisdictional.
Statutory Interpretation of 'Age' in § 1151(f)(2)
On the merits, Judge Menendez held that 'age' in § 1151(f)(2) refers to statutory age — calculated using the § 1153(h)(1) formula — not biological age. She aligned with all four federal courts of appeals that have addressed the question: the Second Circuit in Cuthill v. Blinken, 990 F.3d 272 (2d Cir. 2021); the First Circuit in Teles de Menezes; the Ninth Circuit in Tovar v. Sessions, 882 F.3d 895 (9th Cir. 2018); and the Tenth Circuit in Dekovic v. Rubio, 169 F.4th 1002 (10th Cir. 2026).
The court explained the textual logic adopted by those circuits: § 1153(h)(1) explicitly modifies the age-determination mechanism for F2A beneficiaries, replacing the default biological-age definition in § 1101(b)(1). Because § 1151(f)(2) operates on the same F2A petition and references an age determination for purposes of that classification, the statutory age formula carries through. Reading 'age' as biological age in § 1151(f)(2) would produce three anomalies identified by the First Circuit: it would penalize a parent's naturalization; it would defeat the CSPA's core purpose of protecting minor beneficiaries from aging out; and it would perversely give benefits to adult children that are denied to minor children, contrary to the family-based visa system's general preference for child beneficiaries.
Disposition
Judge Menendez granted Plaintiff Garmai Rennie's Motion for Summary Judgment and denied Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment. She ordered Defendants to instruct USCIS and the National Visa Center to reclassify Ms. Rennie's application on Mr. Fumbah's behalf as an application for an immediate relative visa.
Read the full 14-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.