The Clerk's Office for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has clarified case-opening procedure for visa mandamus complaints: Nature of Suit 465 for any immigration action that is not naturalization or habeas corpus, and a requirement that the Civil Cover Sheet and the CM/ECF docketing entry match exactly.
The Clerk's Office for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia has issued guidance clarifying how visa mandamus complaints are to be case-opened — specifically, which Nature of Suit code belongs on the Civil Cover Sheet, and a docketing-consistency requirement that is easy to overlook until a case is rejected or re-docketed for it. Neither point is a change in mandamus law itself. Both are exactly the kind of procedural detail that determines whether a mandamus complaint is accepted cleanly at intake or bounces back for correction — and in a case whose entire premise is that an agency has taken too long, a self-inflicted delay at filing defeats the point.
Filing a complaint for writ of mandamus in an immigration matter requires selecting Nature of Suit 465 — Other Immigration Actions on the Civil Cover Sheet (Civil Cover Sheet, JS-44 (Rev. 8/2026 DC)) for any immigration-related action that is not a naturalization application and not a petition for writ of habeas corpus — the notice's own example is a complaint alleging failure to adjudicate an application to adjust status to permanent resident, a common fact pattern in USCIS unreasonable-delay mandamus suits. The notice adds a second, narrower requirement: the Nature of Suit selected on the paper cover sheet must match the Nature of Suit entered on the CM/ECF screen at electronic filing. They are two separate data entry points for the same case, and the court is now flagging the mismatch as its own defect rather than treating the cover sheet as informational only.
A civil cover sheet has never been where a mandamus case is won or lost on the merits. It is, however, exactly the kind of administrative gate that produces an entirely avoidable delay — a returned filing, a clerk's-office query, a re-docketing — in a case type where the underlying claim is that the client has already waited too long. The practical fix is simple: confirm 465 is used for every immigration mandamus filing that is not naturalization or habeas, and confirm the CM/ECF entry at filing matches the cover sheet rather than being entered independently by whoever is at the keyboard that day. That second step is the one filings practices actually miss, because the two entries happen in different systems at different moments in the filing workflow.
Nature of Suit 465 is the docket code for the substantive claim mandamus relief and APA unreasonable-delay claims are built on: that an agency, including United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, has a nondiscretionary duty to act on a properly filed application and has failed to do so within a reasonable time. The Mandamus Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1361, supplies the mandamus remedy directly; the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 706(1), separately authorizes a reviewing court to “compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed,” and the two theories are routinely pleaded together in the same D.D.C. complaint. Getting the case-opening paperwork right does not change whether a given delay is actually unreasonable — that remains a fact-specific question about the particular application and the particular agency timeline — but it removes a procedural excuse for the court not to reach that question promptly.
Filing, or about to file, a mandamus action over a delayed USCIS adjudication? Email sherrod@dcfederallitigation.com with the application type and how long it has been pending; a litigator reads it and replies in writing.
The docket classification code on the federal Civil Cover Sheet (Form JS-44) for "Other Immigration Actions" -- immigration-related federal-court claims that are not a naturalization application and not a habeas corpus petition. A mandamus complaint over a delayed USCIS adjudication, such as a pending adjustment-of-status application, is the paradigm case for this code.
No. This is a case-opening procedure clarification, not a change to mandamus law, the Administrative Procedure Act, or what counts as an unreasonable delay. It affects how a complaint is docketed, not whether the underlying claim is valid.
Because the claim itself is that the agency has already taken too long. A filing that bounces back or gets re-docketed over a Nature of Suit mismatch adds exactly the kind of avoidable delay the lawsuit exists to complain about -- an intake checklist item, but one worth getting right every time.
Nature of Suit 465 is a standard code on the federal JS-44 Civil Cover Sheet used nationwide; what this notice clarifies is D.D.C.'s own case-opening procedure and its requirement that the cover sheet and the CM/ECF entry agree -- a docketing-consistency rule specific to this court.
