Duration of Status Stays in Place: A Federal Court Postponed the September 15 Rule for F-1 Students, J-1 Scholars and Foreign Media in Texas

What Changed, and When

The background is in our August 23 post, Duration of Status Ends September 15, 2026: What Changes for International Students and Exchange Visitors in Texas. In short: on July 17, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security published a final rule at 91 FR 44976 that would have replaced the “duration of status” admission used since 1978 for F academic students, J exchange visitors and I foreign media representatives with fixed admission periods — generally no more than four years for F and J, and up to 240 days for I — with an extension-of-stay application to USCIS for anyone needing more time. The rule’s effective date was September 15, 2026. A coalition led by the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration and NAFSA sued on August 18 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and asked the court to stop the rule before that date.

On September 14, 2026, U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV issued a 48-page Memorandum and Order in Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Civil Action No. 26-13799-FDS. The order grants the plaintiffs’ motion “to the extent that it seeks to postpone the effective date of the Final Rule pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 705.” To the extent the plaintiffs asked the court to vacate the rule outright or enter summary judgment, the motion was denied without prejudice, meaning those requests can be renewed later. Reuters reported the ruling the same afternoon; DHS did not immediately respond to its request for comment.

The court found that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim that the rule is “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act in at least four respects: that DHS did not conduct a reasoned calculation of the rule’s benefits and costs, did not meaningfully consider alternatives, did not respond to significant comments, and did not show a rational connection between the rule and the problems it was meant to address. The court characterized the government’s stated rationales, national security and fraud prevention, as “exceptionally weak.” It also found that immediate irreparable harm would follow if the rule took effect, and that the balance of equities and the public interest favored postponement. Those are the court’s findings at the preliminary stage; they are not a final ruling on the merits, and the government is free to contest them as the case continues.

On scope, the court considered whether to limit relief to the plaintiffs’ own members, roughly 600 institutions, and decided instead to postpone the rule in its entirety. Its stated reason is practical: there are more than 5,000 higher-education institutions in the United States, students transfer between them and pursue joint degrees, and a party-specific order would have required “maintaining parallel regulatory regimes” and repeated determinations of which student or school fell inside the order. The postponement therefore applies to every F, J and I nonimmigrant and every institution, in Texas as elsewhere.

Who in Texas This Reaches

Texas is the third-largest host state for international students in the country, behind California and New York, and posted the largest year-over-year increase of any state in the 2024/25 academic year, up 8 percent or 7,497 students, according to the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors 2025 release. Those students and scholars are on public and private campuses in Austin, College Station, Houston, Dallas, Denton, Lubbock, El Paso, San Antonio, Richardson and dozens of smaller communities. Nationally, Reuters reports about 1.6 million people currently hold F visas and about 500,000 hold J visas.

The people affected by the September 14 order are the same three groups the rule would have reached: F academic students, including those on post-completion Optional Practical Training and STEM OPT; J exchange visitors, which in Texas includes research scholars, medical residents and fellows, visiting professors and au pairs; and I representatives of foreign information media. Their F-2 and J-2 dependents are affected alongside them. On the compliance side, the order reaches every Texas university international office, exchange program sponsor and employer that had prepared for a September 15 changeover — and that now has communications, procedures and, in some cases, filings built around a date that no longer applies.

What This Changes Legally

The framework in force today is the one that existed before the rule. Under duration of status, an F-1 student is admitted for as long as they are pursuing a full course of study or engaging in authorized practical training, per 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(f)(5)(i), without a calendar end date stamped at admission. The four-year cap, the 30-day departure window for F and J visa holders who finish early, the restrictions on transferring or changing educational objectives, and the extension-of-stay procedure in the rule are all postponed with it.

A postponement is not a vacatur. The court took what it called “the more cautious approach” of postponing the effective date rather than striking the rule down, and expressly left the door open for the plaintiffs to renew their request for vacatur later. The rule remains on the books with no effective date. It could take effect later if the government wins on appeal, if the court dissolves the postponement, or if the case ends in the government’s favor. Immigration counsel at WR Immigration, summarizing the docket on September 14, described it this way: the court has paused the effective date while litigation continues, not permanently eliminated the regulation. Their bulletin also notes that a separate order, Document 51, implements the postponement.

The order does not, by itself, restore anything that was lost for another reason. The same bulletin cautions that the postponement should not be read as reviving a status that was independently terminated or as extending an Employment Authorization Document that has expired. Permission to remain and permission to work remain separate questions, and a STEM OPT extension still depends on its own timely filing and its own rules. Those are practitioners’ readings, and a lawyer looking at a specific person’s documents is the one who can say how they apply.

There is an open question about the new form editions. USCIS had tied new editions of Form I-539 and Form I-765, dated for September 15, 2026, to the rule, as described in our August 25 post. As of the date on this page we have not located a USCIS statement on whether those editions are still required now that the rule is postponed. The current edition date is printed on each form’s USCIS page, and a lawyer or a designated school official can confirm it on the day a filing goes out.

The next date on the docket is October 2, 2026. According to WR Immigration’s summary of the docket notice, the court has scheduled an in-person status conference for noon Eastern that day. A status conference is a hearing about the case’s schedule; it is not the date the postponement expires, and the bulletin makes that point directly.

What Kind of Option Might Apply

Nothing here is a prediction about the case or about any individual, and nothing here says whether any particular person does or does not qualify for anything. What an immigration lawyer can review, on the actual documents, includes:

• Whether a Form I-539 that was prepared or filed because of the rule is still needed, should be withdrawn, or should stay pending for an unrelated reason.
• What a specific I-20 or DS-2019 program end date means today under duration of status, and how a program extension, transfer or change of level is handled while the rule is postponed.
• How an OPT, STEM OPT or academic-training timeline reads now that the rule’s cap and departure window are not in effect, and what separate rules still govern those work periods.
• Which form edition to use for an I-539 or I-765 filing this week, given the unresolved question described above.
• What a campus or employer should say to students and workers who were told September 15 was certain, and how to keep transition preparations in reserve without acting on them.
• How to track the case so that a decision made in October or later reflects the order in force on the day it is made.

Why Acting Quickly Can Matter

The dates on the record are these. The rule was published on July 17, 2026, with an effective date of September 15, 2026. The postponement order was entered on September 14, 2026, and applies until the court says otherwise. A status conference is set for October 2, 2026. The government may appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and may ask that court to lift the postponement; as of this page’s date we have not located any such filing. None of those dates is a deadline for a student or scholar to do anything, but each is a point at which the legal picture can move, and a person whose program end date, work authorization or travel plans fall near one of them has a reason to have a lawyer watching the docket rather than reading about it afterward.

Sources

1. U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Memorandum and Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction, Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 26-13799-FDS, Document 50, September 14, 2026 (primary document; hosted by a plaintiff).
2. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Establishing a Fixed Time Period of Admission and an Extension of Stay Procedure for Nonimmigrant Academic Students, Exchange Visitors, and Representatives of Foreign Information Media,” final rule, 91 FR 44976, July 17, 2026.
3. Reuters (Nate Raymond), “US judge blocks Trump limits on how long foreign students, journalists can stay,” September 14, 2026.
4. Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, “Duration of Status Litigation,” case page updated September 14, 2026 (plaintiff organization; its description of the case is reported as its own).
5. WR Immigration (Wolfsdorf Rosenthal LLP), “Federal Court Postpones Effective Date of Rule Ending ‘Duration of Status,’” September 14, 2026 (practitioner summary of Documents 50, 51 and 52).
6. Code of Federal Regulations, 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(f), current duration-of-status provisions for F nonimmigrants.
7. Institute of International Education, Open Doors 2025 international student enrollment release, November 2025 (Texas figures).