Babaria v. Blinken
- Susan Illston
- 3:22-cv-05521
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Babaria v. Blinken, Judge Illston granted defendants’ motion to pause the case while the Ninth Circuit considered plaintiffs’ appeal.
The plaintiffs seeking adjudication of their EB-2 visa applications and the government defendants, including USCIS and the Department of State, are affected by the pause in the district-court case.
What happened
Babaria v. Blinken concerns Indian citizens in the United States who applied for EB-2 immigrant visas. Their visa numbers became unavailable because of visa retrogression, and they sued after USCIS and the Department of State did not adjudicate their applications.
The plaintiffs previously asked the court to require the government to adjudicate their applications, but the court denied that request. They appealed that decision to the Ninth Circuit. The defendants then asked the district court to pause the case until the appeal was resolved, and the plaintiffs did not respond.
Judge Illston granted the motion to stay proceedings. She found that pausing the case would not harm the plaintiffs’ current lawful status, while waiting would avoid duplicative litigation and reduce the risk of inconsistent rulings.
The detailed version
- Babaria v. Blinken · No. 3:22-cv-05521
- Susan Illston
- Jan. 13, 2023
Background
The case concerns how United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the United States Department of State (DOS) allocate immigrant visas. The plaintiffs are Indian citizens who reside in the United States in non-immigrant status and applied for EB-2 immigrant visas. Each plaintiff had a visa number available when applying, but no longer had one available because of visa retrogression. The government requires a visa number to be available both when an application is filed and when it is adjudicated, so the applications had not been adjudicated.
The plaintiffs allege that the defendants’ refusal to adjudicate their applications violates the Administrative Procedure Act. After filing the case, the plaintiffs sought emergency relief requiring the defendants to adjudicate the applications. The court treated that request as a motion for a preliminary injunction and denied it on October 18, 2022, finding little to no likelihood of success on the merits, no extreme harm without an injunction, and that the public interest and balance of the equities favored the defendants.
Motion to Stay
The defendants moved to stay, or pause, the district-court proceedings while the plaintiffs appealed the preliminary-injunction decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The appeal was consolidated with two other cases. Briefing was nearly complete, and oral argument was scheduled for March 2023. The plaintiffs did not respond to the motion.
A stay under Landis v. North American Co. is discretionary. The court must weigh the possible harm from granting a stay, the hardship or inequity that could result from requiring a party to continue, and whether a stay would promote the orderly and efficient resolution of the issues.
Court’s Analysis
The court found that the plaintiffs had not identified any harm from a stay. Pausing the litigation would not affect USCIS’s ability to process their applications or their current lawful non-immigrant status. Even if the plaintiffs prevailed on appeal, when and whether their visa applications would be approved remained speculative. The expedited schedule of the appeal also reduced the risk that the stay would cause harmful delay. This factor did not weigh against a stay.
The defendants argued that denying a stay would require duplicative litigation because other district-court cases involved significantly overlapping issues. The court treated this factor as neutral, explaining that merely having to defend a lawsuit is not, by itself, a clear hardship or inequity.
Judicial economy—the efficient use of the courts’ and parties’ resources—strongly favored a stay. The Ninth Circuit’s decision was likely to provide substantial guidance on issues and legal theories also raised in this case and could resolve some claims. Waiting could prevent duplicative litigation and reduce the risk that the district court would reach a decision inconsistent with the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning.
Disposition
The court stayed the action pending resolution of the appeal of its order denying a preliminary injunction. The defendants’ motion to stay proceedings was GRANTED.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.