On January, 24, 2007, plaintiff Yinan Zhang filed a petition for hearing on naturalization application under the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1447(b) in the U.S. District Court California Northern District. The complaint was amended on February 8, 2007 to name additional plaintiffs and to assert class action allegations. The amended complaint alleged that plaintiffs were all long-time lawful permanent residents of the United States whose naturalization applications had been pending for over two years with the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services ("CIS"), awaiting the results of an "FBI name check." Plaintiffs asserted that the unreasonable delays caused by the "FBI name check" process violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief. Attorneys with the Asian Law Caucus, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Immigrants Rights Project, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, Inc. and the Council on American-Islamic Relations represented the plaintiffs.

The government moved to dismiss the case.

On June 12, 2007 several named plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their claims without prejudice, stating that plaintiff Zhang had decided to not to continue as a class representative and had retained new counsel to represent him individually. Those plaintiffs then filed a new lawsuit on July 2, 2007 which was styled Ahmadi v. Chertoff, 07-3455-WHA. See IM-CA-58 of this collection for proceedings in that case.

Zhang failed to respond to the government's motion to dismiss and the District Court (Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong) issued an order for Zhang to show cause why the case should not be dismissed for failure to prosecute. Zhang v. Still, 2007 WL 2126495 (N.D.Cal. 2007). Plaintiff Zhang failed to appear at the show cause hearing and Judge Armstrong dismissed the case without prejudice on September 5, 2007.

Dan Dalton - 11/06/2007


compress summary