UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 21-1207

KARTHIKEYAN SAKTHIVEL; ARAVIND BABU KADIYALA; BISWAJIT 

MOHAPATRA; RAJENDRA SHARMA; SRINIVASA RAO MADUGULA; 

MUJEEB MOHAMMED; AZMATHULLA MOHAMMED; ASHOK KUMAR 

JAYAKUMAR; DIVYA BATHULA; CHETAN JOSHI; SREENISARGA 

GADDE; VENKATA SITA RAMAANJANEYUL BASATI; SRI LAKSHMI 

ALLURI; ARPIT KHURASWAR; RAHUL PATIL; MAMTA GUPTA; 

VENKATA SATYA VISHNU VARDHAN PARCHA,

Plaintiffs – Appellants,

v.

UR M. JADDOU, Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,

Defendant – Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at

Columbia. Cameron McGowan Currie, Senior District Judge. (3:18-cv-03194-CMC)

Argued: December 6, 2022 Decided: April 11, 2023

Before KING and AGEE, Circuit Judges, and Henry E. HUDSON, Senior United States 

District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting by designation.

Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.

ARGUED: Bradley Bruce Banias, BANIAS LAW LLC, Charleston, South Carolina, for 

Appellants. Vanessa Molina, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 

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Washington, D.C., for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Brian M. Boynton, Acting Assistant 

Attorney General, William C. Peachey, Director, Glenn M. Girdharry, Assistant Director, 

Aaron S. Goldsmith, Senior Litigation Counsel, Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil 

Division, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for 

Appellees. 

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

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PER CURIAM:

All seventeen Appellants in this case are beneficiaries of the category of 

nonimmigrant visas defined in 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) (“H-1B Visas”) of the 

Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1101 et seq. Appellants are challenging the 

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (“USCIS”) revocation of their I-129 

petitions for nonimmigrant worker status (“Initial H-1B Petitions”) through which 

Appellants first became H-1B Visa beneficiaries. Some Appellants’ Initial H-1B Petitions 

were revoked by USCIS automatically, while other Appellants’ petitions were revoked 

through mailed revocation notices that were never received.

Appellants collectively brought their action in the District Court for the District of 

South Carolina seeking to set aside USCIS’ revocation of their Initial H-1B Petitions as 

improper. Appellants initially alleged that USCIS had revoked each of their Initial H-1B 

Petitions through mailed revocation notices. After USCIS informed three of the Appellants 

that their Initial H-1B Petitions were revoked automatically, Appellants attempted to 

amend their Complaint and separate the action into two cases—one involving Appellants 

whose petitions were automatically revoked and one involving Appellants whose petitions 

were revoked by mailed revocation notices. Ultimately, the district court ruled that 

Appellants did not meet the permissive joinder requirements of Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure 20(a) and dismissed mailed-revocation Appellants from the case. Only the case 

involving the automatic-revocation Appellants continued before the district court. 

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The remaining parties then cross motioned for summary judgment and the district 

court granted summary judgment for USCIS because the automatic-revocation Appellants 

did not show that any legal consequences had or will flow from their automatic revocations. 

All Appellants appeal. We agree with the district court’s joinder determination. 

However, we do not address the merits of the district court’s summary judgment decision. 

We instead conclude that automatic-revocation Appellants’ claim is moot and therefore

vacate the district court’s summary judgment decision and remand for their dismissal.

I.

H-1B Visas are available for companies who need employees to fill specialty 

occupations and authorize the employees to live and work in the United States on a 

temporary basis. 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b). Specialty occupation is defined as an 

occupation that requires “specialized knowledge” and a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. 

Id. § 1184(i). Each year, Congress makes 65,000 of these H-1B Visas available to 

employers. Id. § 1184(g). Employers seeking these specialized employees file petitions 

with USCIS. USCIS then holds a lottery and chooses the 65,000 petitions, commonly 

referred to as “Cap H-1B Visas.” If an employer’s petition is selected and USCIS grants 

the Cap H-1B Visa, a beneficiary can acquire valid status for up to six years. See 8 C.F.R. 

§ 214.2(h)(15)(ii)(B) (“The alien’s total period of stay may not exceed six years.”); 8 

U.S.C. § 1184(g)(4). 

This case arose from circumstances related to a largescale H-1B Visa fraud scheme 

perpetrated by Appellants’ former employer, EcomNets. EcomNets applied for and 

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obtained Appellants’ Initial H-1B Visas, however, it defrauded the United States in the 

process by filing fraudulent labor applications to the United States Department of Labor. 

EcomNets misrepresented the locations where Appellants were going to be assigned to 

work by fraudulently stating that they would be working in remote rural locations. 

EcomNets actually placed Appellants at locations that would demand much higher wages, 

such as cities, but only paid Appellants the wages commensurate with the rural locations, 

keeping the difference. EcomNets’ owners were indicted for their fraudulent scheme and 

the business was shut down with the Government’s knowledge in 2016. The Appellants 

are all citizens of India and deny any knowledge of the fraud or misrepresentations in the 

applications. 

After EcomNets was shut down, USCIS began the process of revoking Appellants’ 

Initial H-1B Petitions. USCIS records indicate that it mailed notices of intent to revoke 

(“NOIRs”) to EcomNets for most Appellants. At the time these NOIRs were mailed, 

USCIS was aware of EcomNets’ shut down and that the addresses to which the NOIRs 

were mailed were no longer valid. USCIS was also on notice that each Appellant had 

lawfully moved on to a new employer. USCIS received notice through H-1B Portability 

Petitions filed by Appellants’ new employers. Many, if not all, NOIRs mailed to EcomNets 

were returned to USCIS as undeliverable. Thereafter, USCIS revoked Appellants’ Initial 

H-1B Petitions. 

Like the NOIRs, USCIS also sent final revocation notices for each Appellants’ 

Initial H-1B Petition only to EcomNets. Similarly, all of these final notices were returned 

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as undeliverable. Appellants never received direct notice and only learned of the 

revocations through other means.

As was discovered after this litigation ensued, instead of receiving mailed 

revocation notices, at least three Appellants had their Initial H-1B Petitions revoked 

automatically. This occurred because those Appellants’ new employer filed for a new H1B Portability Petition on their behalf, and their previous employer filed a written letter to 

USCIS stating that it no longer employed Appellants and requested that USCIS withdraw 

Appellants’ petitions.

1 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(h)(11)(ii) provides for “immediate and automatic” 

revocation of an employee’s H-1B petition if the employer who obtained the original H1B petition “files a written withdrawal of the petition.” Accordingly, pursuant to the 

regulation, USCIS considered these H-1B petitions immediately and automatically revoked 

upon receipt of the former employer’s written withdrawal letter.

At the outset of this litigation, all Appellants anticipated that USCIS would rely on 

the revocation of their Initial H-1B Petitions to revoke or deny subsequent H-1B Portability 

Petitions or immigrant visa petitions (“I-140 Petitions”) filed by Appellants, and related 

1 Federal statutory law authorizes an alien who previously has been issued an H-1B 

Visa or otherwise provided nonimmigrant status under the H-1B visa program to “accept 

new employment upon the filing” of a new petition on behalf of the employee by a new 

prospective employer. 8 U.S.C. § 1184(n)(1). This is valid so long as, among other things, 

the employee “has not been employed without authorization in the United States before the 

filing of such petition,” id. § 1184(n)(2)(C); and remains employed with the new 

prospective employer “until the new petition is adjudicated,” id. § 1184(n)(1). Federal law 

grants the employee a sixty-day grace period or until the existing validity period ends, 

whichever is shorter, to avail him or herself of H-1B’s Portability Provision following 

“cessation of employment on which the alien’s classification was based.” 8 C.F.R. § 

214.1(1)(2).

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extensions available to H-1B beneficiaries who have approved I-140 Petitions. Appellants 

argued that without their initial H-1B Petitions, Appellants would have to win the lottery 

again in order to receive another Cap H-1B Visa, something that is not guaranteed. 

Based on these common factual allegations, Appellants initially sought to bring suit 

in the district court jointly, totaling seventeen plaintiffs. In the original Complaint, all 

seventeen Appellants alleged USCIS revoked their visas via mailed notice. And, in a 

second motion to dismiss, USCIS agreed that it revoked all seventeen Appellants’ visas 

through notice. However, in a third motion to dismiss, USCIS for the first time stated that 

it issued automatic revocations to three of the Appellants. 

Shortly thereafter, Appellants sought to amend their Complaint in order to

differentiate between the two types of plaintiffs: (1) those based on the automatic 

revocations and (2) those based on notice revocations. The district court denied the motion, 

holding that the three automatic-revocation Plaintiffs could move forward together to 

challenge those revocations. However, the district court concluded that the fourteen other 

notice-based revocation Plaintiffs could not be joined under Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure 20(a) because the two sets of plaintiffs were seeking relief under two different 

legal theories, and the claims were more appropriate to continue as two separate actions. 

The district court concluded that that the automatic-revocation Plaintiffs were the 

appropriate group to move forward in the litigation and the notice-revocation Plaintiffs 

were eventually dismissed without prejudice. 

Subsequently, the automatic-revocation Plaintiffs moved for summary judgment, 

arguing USCIS acted arbitrarily and capriciously, in violation of the Administrative 

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Procedure Act (“APA”), in deeming their Initial H-1B Petitions revoked upon its receipt 

of the withdrawal letter by their previous employer. USCIS opposed Plaintiffs’ motion 

and also moved for summary judgment, arguing that the federal regulation required 

USCIS’ automatic revocation upon receipt of the letter, substantial evidence supported 

such action, and Plaintiffs never identified any adverse legal consequences resulting from 

USCIS’ revocation. The district court granted USCIS’ motion for summary judgment and 

held that USCIS’ automatic revocations did not constitute reviewable final agency action 

because Plaintiffs did not show that the action was one from which legal consequences had 

or will flow. Thus, the district court held that USCIS did not act arbitrarily or capriciously

in automatically revoking Plaintiffs’ Initial H-1B Petitions. 

Importantly, at some point during this litigation, automatic-revocation Appellants 

received new H-1B petitions through the lottery system and were again counted against the 

cap. See Opening Br. 19 (“[T]he Agency has since allowed Appellants Sakthivel, Gadde, 

and Joshi to ‘win’ new cap H1B petitions through recent lotteries.”).

II.

A.

Automatic-revocation Appellants argue the district court erred by granting USCIS’ 

motion for summary judgment and by doing so on an allegedly incomplete administrative 

record. However, we need not address these arguments because we conclude that 

automatic-revocation Appellants’ claim is moot and they therefore lack standing. As a 

consequence, we have no Article III jurisdiction.

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The Court is limited to deciding “cases” and “controversies,” which means, in part, 

that the Court may only decide cases in which the plaintiff has Article III standing. Clapper 

v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398, 408 (2013) (citations omitted). To establish Article 

III standing, a plaintiff must have an injury that is: (1) “concrete, particularized, and actual 

or imminent;” (2) “fairly traceable to the challenged action;” and (3) “redressable by a 

favorable ruling.” Id. at 409 (citations omitted). The plaintiff bears the burden of 

establishing standing. Beck v. McDonald, 848 F.3d 262, 269 (4th Cir. 2017).

Critically, the Court has a special obligation to satisfy itself of this jurisdictional 

element throughout the litigation. Bender v. Williamsport Area Sch. Dist., 475 U.S. 534, 

541 (1986). It is not enough that a plaintiff has standing at the start of a lawsuit—he must 

have standing at all stages of the proceedings. For that reason, the mootness doctrine 

prevents the Court from “advising on legal questions when the issues presented are no 

longer live or the parties lack a legally cognizable interest in the outcome.” Eden, LLC v. 

Justice, 36 F.4th 166, 169 (4th Cir. 2022) (cleaned up). Stated differently, the Court “may 

only decide cases that matter in the real world at the time that [the Court] decides them.” 

Id. at 170 (cleaned up).

Automatic-revocation Appellants allege that USCIS arbitrarily and capriciously 

revoked their initial H-1B petition and accompanying cap-exempt status. USCIS, for its 

part, responds that the automatic revocations did not result in a loss of cap-exempt status 

because the automatic-revocation Appellants had successfully transferred their 

employment pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1184(n)(1). Notably, automatic-revocation Appellants 

do not allege that the revocations resulted in their deportation or unlawful status. Indeed, it 

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appears uncontested that all three automatic-revocation Appellants currently lawfully 

reside in the United States. Instead, automatic-revocation Appellants allege that they were

harmed because without cap-exempt status, they must reenter the lottery to obtain a transfer 

or extension of their H-1B visas, possibly causing long delays and a real potential for not 

“winning” the lottery. But even if the loss of such status may have been a concrete injury

at the outset of this litigation, that harm is no longer a possibility.

At some point during this litigation, automatic-revocation Appellants received new 

H-1B Visas through the lottery system and were again counted against the cap. The statute 

governing cap-exemption provides that any noncitizen “who has already been counted, 

within the 6 years prior to the approval of a [H-1B petition], toward the numerical 

limitations of [the cap] shall not again be counted toward those limitations[.]” 8 U.S.C. 

§ 1184(g)(7). Because automatic-revocation Appellants won visas through the lottery after 

their revocation, they now unquestionably possess cap-exempt status. Therefore, the 

question of whether their initial H-1B visa and cap-exempt status were revoked is not 

relevant to their current status. Accordingly, any harm that they may have incurred from 

the initial revocation is moot.2

2 To the extent that automatic-revocation Appellants argue that they will suffer harm 

because USCIS might deny their adjustment of status petitions due to the prior revocation, 

this alleged harm is too speculative to satisfy the Article III standing requirements. 

Clapper, 568 U.S. at 409 (“Although imminence is concededly a somewhat elastic concept, 

it cannot be stretched beyond its purpose, which is to ensure that the alleged injury is not 

too speculative for Article III purposes—that the injury is certainly impending.” (citations 

omitted)).

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Because we are limited to deciding cases that “matter in the real world at the time 

we decide them,” Eden, 36 F.4th at 171 (cleaned up), and cannot advise on legal questions 

when the “parties lack a legally cognizable interest in the outcome,” id. at 170, we vacate 

the district court’s summary judgment decision and remand the case to the district court to

dismiss automatic-revocation Appellants for lack of Article III standing.

3

B.

Additionally, Appellants argue that the district court abused its discretion in denying 

the fourteen notice-revocation Appellants leave to file an amended complaint and ruling 

that they failed to satisfy the joinder requirements under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 

20(a). Rule 15(a) provides that leave to amend a pleading should be freely given “when 

justice so requires.” Balas v. Huntington Ingalls Indus., 711 F.3d 401, 409 (4th Cir. 2013). 

“[L]eave to amend a pleading should be denied only when the amendment would be 

prejudicial to the opposing party, there has been bad faith on the part of the moving party, 

or the amendment would be futile.” Edwards v. City of Goldsboro, 178 F.3d 231, 242 (4th 

Cir. 1999) (quoting Johnson v. Oroweat Foods Co., 785 F.2d 503, 509 (4th Cir. 1986)). 

Under Rule 20(a), permissive joinder of plaintiffs is proper if (1) the plaintiffs assert a right 

to relief arising out of the same transaction or occurrence and (2) some question of law or 

fact common to all the plaintiffs will arise in the action. District courts have wide discretion 

3 This conclusion applies only to automatic-revocation Appellants because there is 

no indication in the record that notice-revocation Appellants received subsequent H-1B 

Visas and cap-exempt status. 

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over permissive joinder. See Aleman v. Chugach Support Servs., Inc., 485 F.3d 206, 218 

n.5 (2007). In determining whether to grant a motion to amend to join additional plaintiffs, 

a district court “must consider both the general principles of amendment provided by Rule 

15(a) and also the more specific joinder provisions of Rule 20(a).” Hinson v. Norwest Fin., 

S.C., Inc., 239 F.3d 611, 618 (4th Cir. 2001). 

Here, the district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to allow Appellants

to bring their suit collectively. Although all Appellants were already a part of the lawsuit

and did not have to be joined through an amended complaint, they sought in their proposed 

amended complaint, for the first time, to divide into two separate groups. This proposed 

categorization completely changed the claims and was effectively an attempt to join a new 

category of plaintiffs. The district court therefore properly treated this amendment as a 

joinder and determined that the claims of the two distinct categories of plaintiffs should 

not be collectively joined in a single action because they were challenging USCIS’ 

revocations on two different substantive grounds, and thus, the claims rested on wholly

different legal theories. As the district court noted, declining to allow the claims to proceed 

collectively does not preclude the other plaintiffs who were not joined from pursuing relief 

in separate lawsuits. The district court was in the best position to assess whether to 

permissively join the newly established groups of plaintiffs under Rule 20(a), and it did not 

abuse its discretion in finding that it was not appropriate to do so. Therefore, we affirm 

the district court’s ruling. 

* * * *

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Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s denial of Appellants’ motion to amend, 

vacate the district court’s summary judgment decision, and remand for dismissal of 

automatic-revocation Appellants for lack of Article III standing. 

AFFIRMED IN PART, VACATED IN PART, AND REMANDED

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