The Duration of Status Rule Was Paused, Not Killed. Keep Your OPT Plan.

On September 14, 2026, one day before it was to take effect, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts postponed the effective date of the DHS final rule that would have replaced "duration of status" with fixed admission periods for F, J and I nonimmigrants. Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV entered the order in Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:26-cv-13799. Duration of status remains the operating framework. Nothing changed for your workforce on September 15.

Read the next sentence before you tell your hiring managers the problem went away. The court postponed the rule. It did not strike it down.

What the court actually did

The order rests on Section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 705, which allows a reviewing court to postpone the effective date of an agency rule to preserve the status quo while the case proceeds. That is a pause on the rule's operation, not a holding that the rule is unlawful. The court denied the plaintiffs' requests for vacatur and for summary judgment without prejudice, so the merits remain open and those requests can be renewed.

Because Section 705 relief runs against the effective date of the rule itself, rather than against enforcement as to particular plaintiffs, it is not confined to the named parties. The plaintiffs describe the relief as nationwide.

A status conference is set for October 2, 2026.

Why the court paused it

Judge Saylor's stated concerns went to whether DHS adequately explained what it was doing. On the four year cap on F admissions, he observed that "an international student who is one credit short of graduating could be required to leave the United States without a degree." On the discretion the rule would hand the agency, he wrote that "it is not difficult to imagine how that system might be abused to punish those whose viewpoints or research are disfavored." He described part of the agency's justification as "not a rational response to a legitimate concern."

Those are reasoning defects, and reasoning defects are curable. An agency that loses on arbitrary and capricious grounds can return to the record, explain itself better, and come back with a rule that survives review. That is the practical reason not to file this away as finished.

What this means for your roster today

Everything reverts to the framework you already knew.

1. F and J nonimmigrants continue to be admitted for duration of status. Their Form I-94 records continue to read "D/S."
2. The 60 day period to prepare for departure after completing a course of study or post-completion practical training stays at 60 days. The reduction to 30 days was part of the rule and does not take effect.
3. No Form I-539 extension of stay is required on the schedule the rule would have imposed.
4. The transition provision, the six month OPT filing window and the 240 day continuation of employment authorization are all features of a rule that is not operating. Do not build around them right now.

Your existing obligations are untouched. Full course of study requirements, employment limits, and SEVIS record keeping and reporting all continue exactly as before. The postponement moved the rule's start date. It changed nothing about the rules already in force.

Do not unwind the work

If you have already built buffer into OPT and STEM OPT contingent start dates, keep it. Three reasons.

First, the pause is procedural and reversible. The government can appeal to the First Circuit and can ask for a stay of the postponement. A rule that is paused can begin operating on short notice.

Second, the merits are unresolved. The court denied summary judgment without prejudice, and October 2 brings a status conference, not a decision.

Third, the underlying discipline was never really about this rule. Separating "authorized to remain" from "authorized to work" in your onboarding checks is sound practice under any framework, because those two things have always been capable of diverging for reasons that have nothing to do with duration of status.

The cost of keeping a conservative plan is a few weeks of buffer you did not need. The cost of dismantling it and rebuilding under deadline is a start date.

The I-9 answer is still boring

Nothing in the September 14 order touches Form I-9 practice, because nothing in the rule did either. An unexpired EAD remains an acceptable List A document. Do not construct a reverification practice around status documents you are not entitled to demand. Asking for immigration paperwork beyond what Form I-9 requires creates document abuse exposure under 8 U.S.C. 1324b and buys you nothing.

One caution specific to this week: do not let a hiring manager read "the rule was blocked" as "we can ease up on work authorization checks." Those are unrelated propositions.

A note for your international employees

Two messages are worth sending, and they point in opposite directions, which is exactly why they should go out together.

The immediate pressure is off. Nobody needs to file anything this week because of September 15.

At the same time, nobody should change travel plans, filing timing or program decisions on the strength of a postponement without checking first. Students and scholars should speak with their designated school official or responsible officer before filing something early, or holding something back, on the theory that the rule is gone. It is not gone. It is paused.

What to do

1. Tell your hiring managers the September 15 date is off, and in the same message tell them the buffer stays in the offer letters.
2. Keep the roster. Every employee, intern and pending hire in F-1 or J-1 status, with the Form I-20 or DS-2019 end date and the EAD expiration for each. It is useful under any framework and expensive to rebuild.
3. Do not accelerate or delay OPT or STEM OPT filings because of this order. File on the timeline the existing regulations call for, which is the timeline that applied before July 17.
4. Leave the contingency language in your offer letters where it is.
5. Calendar October 2, 2026 for the status conference, and set a second check for any appeal to the First Circuit.
6. Keep the part of the plan that separates authorized stay from work authorization in your onboarding checks. That one outlives this litigation.

What would change this analysis

Three developments, in descending order of likelihood. A stay of the postponement from the First Circuit, which would let the rule take effect while an appeal proceeds. A merits ruling once the case develops. Or a new or amended rule from DHS built on a fuller administrative record. We are watching all three.

Source note: quotations from Judge Saylor's memorandum and order are taken from contemporaneous reporting rather than from the docket text, which was not publicly retrievable at the time of writing. We will conform this piece to the text of the order once it is available.