The New Public Charge Rule Is Now in Effect: Two Lawsuits Were Filed September 14, No Court Has Blocked It, and Texas Green Card Applications Filed From Today Are Reviewed Under the New Standard

What Changed, and When

The Department of Homeland Security final rule titled Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility was published in the Federal Register on July 20, 2026, at 91 FR 45324, and its stated effective date is September 18, 2026. The rule rescinds the 2022 public charge regulation that had governed adjustment of status applications since December 2022.

By its own terms the rule applies to applications for admission made on or after September 18, 2026, and to applications for adjustment of status postmarked or electronically submitted on or after September 18, 2026. The filing date is what determines which standard applies to a given application.

USCIS issued the implementing guidance on August 18, 2026 as Policy Alert PA-2026-09, updating the USCIS Policy Manual with the same September 18 effective date. Under that guidance, for means-tested public benefits received on or after September 18, 2026, officers may consider any and all such benefits as part of a totality-of-the-circumstances review. The categories the guidance identifies as potentially relevant include cash assistance, public or assisted housing, financial aid for post-secondary education, food assistance, and government-funded health coverage.

Two points that get lost in the coverage, and both come from the government’s own materials. DHS states that the rule does not change who is eligible for any benefit program — eligibility rules for Medicaid, SNAP and the rest are set by the programs, not by this rule. And benefits received by a family member are not attributed to the applicant. We covered the mechanics of the rule in more detail when the guidance was issued, in our August 19 post on the rule.

One practical change lands on the same date: from September 18, 2026, USCIS accepts only the 09/18/26 edition of Form I-485, the application to register permanent residence or adjust status. The form-edition situation this month has been unusually tangled, and we wrote it out separately in our September 16 post on the I-765, I-539 and I-485 editions.

The Two Lawsuits, and Why the Rule Took Effect Anyway

On September 14, 2026, two separate suits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The first was filed by a coalition of state attorneys general. According to the announcement from the California Attorney General, the coalition is led by California, New York and Illinois and joined by the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia, together with the Governor of Pennsylvania. The complaint as filed is published by the New York Attorney General’s office.

The second was filed by local governments. New York City announced that it filed alongside the City of Chicago, the City and County of San Francisco, the County of Santa Clara, the City of Seattle, King County, Washington, and the Public Rights Project.

Both sets of plaintiffs argue that the rule exceeds the department’s statutory authority and is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act, and both ask the court to vacate it. DHS, for its part, states in the rule that rescinding the 2022 regulation restores officer discretion to evaluate all pertinent facts and aligns with long-standing policy on self-reliance. Those are the competing positions as the parties themselves state them; a court will decide them.

Filing a lawsuit does not, by itself, suspend an effective date. A court has to issue an order — a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction, a stay, or a judgment — before a rule stops operating. As of this writing no such order blocking the public charge rule has been publicly reported, so the September 18 effective date arrived on schedule. That could change: the same thing happened in reverse on September 14, when a federal court postponed the duration of status rule and USCIS reversed a form-edition switch within a day, as we described in our September 15 post.

Texas is not a plaintiff in either case. That does not change how the rule applies to a person living in Texas — this is a federal rule administered by a federal agency, and it operates the same way in every state.

Who in Texas This Reaches

The rule reaches people applying for admission to the United States or for adjustment of status — in everyday language, most people applying for a green card from inside the country, and their sponsors by way of the affidavit of support. Texas is home to one of the largest populations of adjustment applicants in the nation, concentrated in the Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio regions and along the border in El Paso, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley, but present in every corner of the state.

It does not reach everyone. Congress has exempted a number of categories from the public charge ground of inadmissibility altogether — refugees and asylees, certain VAWA self-petitioners, certain T and U nonimmigrants, and others. Whether a particular category is exempt, and whether a particular person falls inside it, is precisely the sort of question an immigration lawyer reviews against the person’s own record rather than something anyone can answer from a news article.

The organizations that brought the lawsuits say in their filings and public statements that they expect a chilling effect reaching well past the people the rule covers — families who remain fully eligible for benefits deciding not to use them out of fear. Advocacy groups and local officials have described that concern; it is their characterization, and we report it as such. What we can say without characterizing anything is that a person who is uncertain whether a benefit matters to their case has a way to find out that does not involve guessing.

What This Changes Legally

Three things are now true that were not true a week ago, and each is a fact rather than a prediction.

First, the filing date controls. An adjustment application postmarked or electronically submitted before September 18, 2026 is reviewed under the prior standard; one going out from today is reviewed under the new one. That line is drawn in the rule itself.

Second, the scope of what an officer may weigh is broader. Under the 2022 regulation, most non-cash benefits could not be considered. Under the new guidance, means-tested benefits received on or after the effective date may be weighed as one factor among many in a totality-of-the-circumstances review. It remains a totality review: no single benefit is described as automatically determinative.

Third, the litigation is live. A ruling in either Southern District of New York case could change the picture, in either direction, at any point. Anyone tracking this should watch the docket and the agency’s own alerts rather than relying on a summary written on any particular day — including this one.

What Kind of Option Might Apply

An immigration attorney can review a number of questions that only make sense against a specific record:

• Whether the applicant falls within a category that Congress exempted from the public charge ground entirely.
• Which benefits, if any, are actually in the applicant’s own history, as distinct from benefits received by a spouse, a child, or another household member.
• How the affidavit of support and the sponsor’s circumstances fit with the rest of the file — a piece that changed separately this month, as we noted in our September 4 post on the new Form I-864 edition.
• Which form editions a filing needs so it is not rejected on a technicality unrelated to the merits.
• Whether a request for evidence or a denial that cites public charge is worth challenging, and by what route.

None of that is something to work out alone at a kitchen table with a stack of printouts. It is ordinary immigration practice, and lawyers do it every week.

Why Acting Quickly Can Matter

Immigration filings run on dates. A form edition switches on a date. A rule applies by the date a filing is postmarked or submitted. A response to a request for evidence is due on a date. A court order, when one comes, takes effect on a date. In a month where three separate form editions and one major rule all moved, the value of getting a file in front of someone who reads these notices for a living goes up considerably.

There is also a quieter reason. A great many people reading about this rule are not affected by it at all — they are in an exempt category, or the benefits they are worried about are not theirs, or they already filed. Finding that out is often a short conversation, and it is a better use of an afternoon than worrying.

Sources

1. Department of Homeland Security, Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility, final rule, 91 FR 45324 (July 20, 2026) — the rule, its September 18, 2026 effective date, its applicability provision, and the department’s stated rationale. (Primary document.)
2. Complaint, New York, et al. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, et al. (S.D.N.Y., filed September 14, 2026), published by the New York Attorney General — the states’ claims as filed. (Primary document.)
3. Office of the Mayor of the City of New York, “New York City Leads Cities and Counties in Lawsuit Challenging Federal Government’s New Public Charge Rule” (September 14, 2026) — the local-government suit, its plaintiffs, and a link to the complaint as filed. (Primary document.)
4. California Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General, press release on the multistate public charge suit (September 14, 2026) — the roster of participating states and the Administrative Procedure Act claims. (Primary document.)
5. USCIS, “USCIS Issues Guidance on Making Public Charge Inadmissibility Determination” and USCIS Policy Manual Updates — Policy Alert PA-2026-09 of August 18, 2026, the benefit categories, and the September 18 effective date. (Primary documents.)
6. JURIST, “Two lawsuits challenge Trump administration’s revised public charge rule for immigrants” (September 2026) — independent confirmation that two suits were filed and that they did not by themselves stop the rule.
7. KPBS, “California joins 21 states to block Trump’s plan to revive ‘public charge’ immigrant rule” (September 14, 2026) — independent coverage of the multistate filing.
8. Immigrant Legal Resource Center, “Latest on Public Charge” — a continuously updated status page tracking whether any court order has blocked the rule.