News & Commentary

August 20, 2026

Philippa Marks

Philippa Marks is a student at Harvard Law School.

In today’s news and commentary, a coalition of unions and advocacy groups sue the federal government over a rule limiting how long students can remain in the U.S., and a Illinois federal judge declines to dismiss a former Amazon worker’s suit alleging discrimination.

On Tuesday, a group of unions and press advocacy groups including the UAW, the American Federation of Teachers, and the NewsGuild filed a complaint and a request for a permanent injunction seeking to prevent the implementation of a new federal rule in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The final rule, announced by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in July and set to take effect on September 15, will limit international students on F-1 visas to four-year stays in the U.S. Under the new rule, DHS will require students who take longer than four years to complete their degree, including PhD and medical students, to file for an extension of stay with the government. Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA, the association of international educators, described the rule as “unnecessary government intrusion into academic decision-making.”

On Monday, Judge Johnston of the U.S. District for the Northern District of Illinois declined to dismiss a former Amazon warehouse associate’s Civil Rights Act and Pregnant Workers Fairness Act claims. Dazha Delitz, the former Amazon employee, adequately alleged that the company reduced her overtime hours and later fired her because she was pregnant. Delitz argues that Amazon restricted her overtime — but not that of other non-pregnant workers — and then eliminated it entirely after she requested an accommodation, and that the reason Amazon gave for her termination, that she was “sitting down in a trailer” two months earlier, was pretextual. The judge wrote that it was “reasonable to infer that the firing – for an isolated incident months earlier- is the culmination of a pattern of escalating adverse actions that began when Ms. Delitz’s disclosed her pregnancy.” However, the judge did dismiss Delitz’s failure to accommodate claim and her Title VII sexual harassment claim.

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