USCIS Is Not Accepting the New Form I-765 and I-539 Editions After the Court Order: The Old Editions Stay in Use, and a New Form I-485 Edition Is Still Required September 18 in Texas

What Changed, and When

On August 14, 2026, USCIS published an alert announcing that revised editions of Form I-539 and Form I-765, both dated 09/15/26, would be published on September 15, 2026 to align the forms with the Department of Homeland Security rule ending “duration of status” for F, J and I nonimmigrants. The alert said there would be no grace period, that the 08/28/24 edition of Form I-539 and the 08/21/25 edition of Form I-765 would be rejected if postmarked or submitted on or after September 15, and that only the 09/15/26 editions would be accepted from that date. We covered that announcement in our August 25 post.

On September 14, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts postponed the effective date of that rule nationwide in Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 26-cv-13799, as described in our September 15 post. At the time we wrote that post, USCIS had not said what the order meant for the new form editions.

It has now. As of September 15, 2026, the USCIS pages for Form I-765 and Form I-539 both carry the same alert. It states that the court’s order postpones the effective date of the final rule pending further order of the court or resolution of the case on the merits, that DHS is preliminarily enjoined from taking further action to implement the rule, and that “until such time, USCIS will proceed under the previous regulatory provisions.” On the forms specifically, the alert reads: “Pursuant to the Sept. 14, 2026, order, USCIS continues to accept the 08/28/24 edition of Form I-539 and 08/21/25 edition of Form I-765 and is not accepting the 09/15/26 edition of Forms I-539 and I-765.” The August 14 alert now carries a USCIS “Archived Content” banner stating that the information on that page is out of date. The same alert records DHS’s position that it “strongly disagrees with the court’s order and if the order is lifted, will take measures to implement the final rule.”

The American Immigration Lawyers Association’s practice alert of September 14 summarizes the same outcome for its members: the new versions of Forms I-539 and I-765 will no longer take effect on September 15 because of the injunction, while new versions of Form I-485 and its Supplements A and J, Form I-945 and Form I-356 take effect on September 18 with no grace period and with preview versions available.

Which Edition Applies on Which Date

As of the date on this page, the USCIS form pages say the following. The edition date is printed in the bottom corner of each page of the form.

• Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization: the 08/21/25 edition continues to be accepted. The 09/15/26 edition is not being accepted.
• Form I-539, Application to Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status: the 08/28/24 edition continues to be accepted. The 09/15/26 edition is not being accepted.
• Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status: a separate change, tied to the public charge rule rather than the duration-of-status rule, is still going ahead. USCIS’s August 19 alert and its Form I-485 page state that before September 18, 2026 only the 01/20/25 and 09/04/26 editions are accepted; that those editions will be rejected if postmarked or electronically submitted on or after September 18, 2026; and that only the 09/18/26 edition will be accepted from that date. There is no grace period, and USCIS says the 09/18/26 edition should not be filed before September 18. A preview of the new edition is posted on the form page.

Two details on Form I-485 are worth reading closely. The 09/04/26 edition mentioned above was published alongside a September 4 interim final rule about certain children born in the United States to foreign government employees; the Form I-485 page states that, because of a separate injunction in Casa Inc. v. Trump, DHS will not take actions to implement that rule or that edition as to members of the certified class. And the September 18 switch applies to the public charge rule that we described in our August 19 post; nothing in the September 14 court order touches it.

Who in Texas This Reaches

The reason the I-765 reversal matters far beyond university campuses is that Form I-765 is not a student form. It is the single application used to request or renew an Employment Authorization Document, and the people who file it in Texas include applicants with a pending green-card application who want interim work authorization, asylum applicants whose cases have been pending long enough to request a work permit, DACA recipients renewing employment authorization, people with Temporary Protected Status, certain dependent spouses of visa holders, F-1 students requesting Optional Practical Training or a STEM OPT extension, and J-2 dependents. Form I-539 is filed by visitors extending a stay, by dependents in F-2, J-2, H-4 and similar categories, by people changing from one nonimmigrant status to another, and by F and M students seeking reinstatement.

The September 18 change on Form I-485 reaches a different and also large group: every person applying for a green card from inside the United States, whether through a family petition, an employment petition, asylum, or another route, along with the Texas employers, sponsors and family members whose cases are tied to those applications. Texas is home to one of the largest immigrant populations of any state, and these three forms are among the most common immigration filings made here, from Houston and Dallas to El Paso, Laredo, the Rio Grande Valley, Lubbock and Tyler. The same edition rule applies to a filing mailed from any of them.

A third group is affected in a quieter way: anyone who, relying on the August 14 alert, downloaded and prepared the 09/15/26 edition of Form I-765 or I-539 for a filing this week. That preparation now has to be redone on the older edition, because the new edition is the one USCIS says it is not accepting.

What This Changes Legally

An outdated edition is a stated reason for rejection. The USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 1, Part B, Chapter 6, lists “use of an outdated version of a USCIS form at time of submission” among the reasons USCIS rejects a benefit request. The same chapter says that a rejection may not be appealed, that a corrected request may be resubmitted and is processed as a new request, that new fees are required, and that “the rejected case does not retain its original filing date when resubmitted.” This week the trap runs in both directions: a Form I-765 or I-539 filed on the 09/15/26 edition is filed on an edition USCIS is not accepting, and a Form I-485 postmarked on or after September 18 on the 01/20/25 edition is filed on an edition USCIS has said it will reject.

For a work-permit renewal, a lost filing date can mean a gap in work authorization. Under a DHS interim final rule effective October 30, 2025, described in this USCIS news release, most people who file to renew an EAD on or after that date no longer receive an automatic extension of the expiring card while the renewal is pending; the exceptions USCIS lists are extensions provided by law or by a Federal Register notice for TPS-related employment documents. A renewal that is rejected and refiled therefore starts its processing clock again, later, with a card that may already have expired. Whether a particular person falls within an exception is a question for a lawyer reading that person’s category and documents.

For an extension or change of status, the filing date is tied to lawful stay. USCIS regulations at 8 C.F.R. § 214.1(c)(4) generally require an extension request to be filed before the applicant’s current period of stay expires, and allow USCIS to excuse a late filing only in its discretion, where the delay was due to extraordinary circumstances beyond the applicant’s control, among other conditions. A Form I-539 that is rejected on edition grounds and resubmitted after the I-94 date has passed is a late filing, and the argument that the rejection itself was the extraordinary circumstance is an argument a lawyer makes, not a result anyone can assume.

The reversal is tied to a court order that could itself change. The USCIS alert is explicit that DHS disagrees with the September 14 order and intends to implement the rule if the order is lifted. The court has set a status conference for October 2, 2026, and the government may appeal. If the postponement ends, the 09/15/26 editions could become mandatory again on a schedule USCIS has not yet announced. The edition that is correct today is the one printed on the USCIS form page on the day of filing, and that is a page worth reading the same day.

Nothing about fees, eligibility or evidence changed with the edition. Keeping the older edition of Form I-765 or I-539 does not change who may apply, what fee is due, or what evidence is required for that person’s category. The September 18 edition of Form I-485 is different in that respect: it was revised to collect the information the public charge rule calls for, so an applicant filing on or after September 18 is answering the new questions as well as using the new form.

What Kind of Option Might Apply

Nothing here is a prediction about the litigation 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:

• Which edition to file this week for a specific Form I-765, I-539 or I-485, checked against the USCIS form page on the day the package is postmarked or submitted online.
• What to do with a package already prepared on the 09/15/26 edition of Form I-765 or I-539, and whether any part of it can be reused on the older edition.
• Whether a pending Form I-485 should be filed before or after September 18, given the new questions on the 09/18/26 edition and the applicant’s own timeline.
• What a rejection would mean for one person — a work permit that expires before a refiled renewal is decided, an I-94 date that passes while an extension is redone, or a priority date and visa availability for an adjustment applicant.
• Whether an exception to the end of automatic EAD extensions applies to a particular renewal category, and what that person’s employer can and cannot accept in the meantime.
• How to track the case so that a filing planned for October or later reflects the order and the edition in force on the day it goes out.

Why Acting Quickly Can Matter

The dates on the record are these. The USCIS pages for Forms I-765 and I-539 were updated on September 15, 2026 to say the 08/21/25 and 08/28/24 editions continue to be accepted and the 09/15/26 editions are not. The Form I-485 switch to the 09/18/26 edition takes effect for anything postmarked or electronically submitted on or after September 18, 2026, with no grace period. A status conference in the duration-of-status case is set for October 2, 2026. None of those dates is a deadline to apply for anything, but a work-permit renewal, an extension of stay or a green-card application that is mailed on the wrong edition comes back without a filing date, and for a person whose card or I-94 is close to expiring, the time it takes to notice the rejection and refile is time that cannot be recovered. That is the reason to have a lawyer confirm the edition before the envelope is sealed rather than after it is returned.

Sources

1. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, form page with court-order alert, last reviewed/updated September 15, 2026 (primary document).
2. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Form I-539, Application to Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status, form page with court-order alert, last reviewed/updated September 15, 2026 (primary document).
3. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “USCIS to Publish New Editions of Form I-539 and Form I-765; Older Editions Will Be Rejected Starting Sept. 15,” alert, August 14, 2026, now marked by USCIS as archived and out of date.
4. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “USCIS to Publish New Edition of Form I-485; Older Editions Will Be Rejected Starting Sept. 18,” alert, August 19, 2026, and the Form I-485 page (primary documents).
5. 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, September 14, 2026 (primary document; hosted by a plaintiff).
6. American Immigration Lawyers Association, “Featured Issue: Elimination of Duration of Status for F, J, and I Visas,” including Practice Alert, AILA Doc. No. 26091402, September 14, 2026 (professional association; summary reported as its own).
7. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Policy Manual, Volume 1, Part B, Chapter 6, Submitting Requests (rejection reasons and effect on filing date).
8. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “DHS Ends Automatic Extension of Employment Authorization,” news release on the interim final rule effective October 30, 2025.
9. Code of Federal Regulations, 8 C.F.R. § 214.1(c)(4), timely filing of extension requests.
10. 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.