Impossible Foods Inc. v. Jaddou

Background

Impossible Foods Inc. filed an I-140 petition asking United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to classify its employee, Seshadri Gowrishankar, as an “outstanding professor or researcher” for purposes of an immigrant visa petition. USCIS denied the petition after finding that Impossible Foods had not shown by a preponderance of the evidence that Gowrishankar was internationally recognized as outstanding in the academic field.

Impossible Foods then filed this case under the Administrative Procedure Act. Claim one alleged that USCIS adopted the “Kazarian policy”—a two-step approach for evaluating evidence in certain immigrant visa petitions—without the notice-and-comment process required for a legislative rule. On January 22, 2024, the court granted Ur Mendoza Jaddou’s motion to dismiss claim one with prejudice. The court ruled that Impossible Foods had not established that the Kazarian policy was a legislative rule subject to notice-and-comment rulemaking. The court did not decide Jaddou’s separate argument that the claim was barred by the statute of limitations.

Motion to Alter or Amend

Impossible Foods moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e) to alter or amend the January 22 order. It argued that the court had clearly erred by stating that Impossible Foods had not identified the earlier legislative rule allegedly amended by the Kazarian policy. Impossible Foods also asked, in the alternative, for permission to amend the complaint to clarify that the policy amended 8 C.F.R. § 204.5(i).

Rule 59(e) permits a district court to reconsider and amend a previous order, but the motion must be filed no later than 28 days after entry of judgment. Impossible Foods filed its motion on February 21, 2024, more than 28 days after the January 22 order. The court therefore ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to grant the Rule 59(e) motion.

Reconsideration and Amendment

The court treated the untimely Rule 59(e) motion as a request for permission to file a motion for reconsideration under Civil Local Rule 7-9. That rule requires reasonable diligence and a material difference in fact or law, new material facts or a change in law, or a manifest failure by the court to consider material facts or dispositive legal arguments previously presented. It also does not permit a party to use reconsideration to raise arguments that could have been made earlier.

The court denied permission to seek reconsideration. It found that Impossible Foods had not shown that the court failed to consider arguments previously presented. According to the court, Impossible Foods’s original opposition had asked the court to apply the governing Ninth Circuit test but had not analyzed that test or identified the earlier legislative rule that the Kazarian policy allegedly amended. The court viewed the new motion as an attempt to present arguments that should have been included in the original opposition.

The court also denied Impossible Foods’s alternative request for leave to amend the complaint, characterizing the proposed amendment as another attempt to obtain reconsideration of the January 22 order. The court’s final disposition was that Impossible Foods’s motion for leave to file a motion for reconsideration of the January 22, 2024 order was denied.