US Court dismisses further appeal against OPT ruling

The US Appeals Court has denied a further petition by a tech workers’ trade union to challenge against a ruling that maintained the current Optional Practical Training (OPT) post-study work settings.

In October 2022, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected an appeal by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (WashTech), which has maintained a long-running legal appeal against OPT and the OPT STEM extension.

Following that ruling, WashTech requested a review en banc by all of the court’s judges, but this week the Court of Appeals has denied the petition.

The only option left for WashTech is to appeal to the Supreme Court to review the case.

The OPT scheme allows all international students to stay for a period of 12 months to work in a field related to their course of study, and since 2016 international graduates from STEM courses have been applying for an additional 24 months.

WashTech first filed a lawsuit against the OPT STEM rule and the original OPT rule in 2016.

In the 2020/21 academic year, there were 203,885 international students on OPT, according to the annual Open Doors report by the Institute of International Education (IIE), compared with 76,031 a decade earlier. The 24-month STEM extension has been credited for the growth in the OPT scheme.

In January last year, the Department of Homeland Security declared 22 additional academic fields to be eligible for the STEM OPT extension, and launched a consultation on further expansion of eligible programmes.

International education associations in the USA submitted an amicus brief in support of the OPT scheme during the legal proceedings, and have called for further strengthening and expansion of OPT as a measure to attract and retain more international students.