Court Upholds H-4 Work Authorization for Spouses of H-1B Holders in Green Card Backlog

A federal district court in Washington, D.C. has dismissed a lawsuit that threatened to eliminate work authorization for spouses of H-1B visa holders caught in the employment-based green card backlog. The case, Save Jobs USA v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (15-cv-00615), was brought by an anti-immigration group seeking to invalidate H-4 Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) for approximately 130,000 visa holders. The court ruled in favor of Immigration Voice, the non-profit organization that intervened in the case, finding that 'decades of executive-branch practice, and both explicit and implicit congressional ratification of that practice' support the legality of H-4 EAD. Immigration Voice, which represents over 130,000 high-skilled immigrant members, moved to intervene in 2017 to prevent a potentially adverse settlement during the Trump Administration. For EB-3 applicants, this ruling is particularly significant. Many EB-3 beneficiaries maintain H-1B status while waiting years or decades for their priority dates to become current, and their spouses depend on H-4 EAD to remain employed during that wait. Losing this work authorization would have severely impacted household incomes for families already enduring lengthy green card backlogs driven by per-country limits. Immigration Voice President Aman Kapoor emphasized that the backlog constitutes national-origin based discrimination, as applicants from countries like India and China face disproportionately longer wait times than those from other nations. The H-4 EAD program was established precisely to provide relief to these affected families. This decision reinforces the legal standing of H-4 EADs going forward and provides certainty for the tens of thousands of immigrant families relying on spousal employment authorization while navigating the multi-year employment-based green card process.