The Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia has issued a decision permitting a challenge to the Foreign Affairs Manual’s guidance that a visa can be denied if there is a “reason to believe” the applicant has previously made a material misrepresentation. The court found that this forward facing challenge to the FAM was not a challenge to a visa denial, and thus, was not covered by the doctrine of consular nonreviewability. “[W]e are not confident that Congress authorized a consular officer unilaterally to deem a person to have made willful misrepresentations and thereby trigger permanent ineligibility for a visa based only on an implicit ‘reason to believe’ standard – especially considering its decision to make that standard explicit for other categories of noncitizens posing elevated risks to national interests.”
The full text of Pietersen v. Department of State can be found here:
https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2025/05/24-5092-2118190.pdf