Court Opinion

ID: 9386572
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-04-12 21:00:25.111328+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:07.326141
License: Public Domain

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                                           UNPUBLISHED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        Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.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        Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.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 H-

        1B 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 H-

        1B 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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