Naturalization delays are the one area of immigration law with a hard statutory deadline, and most applicants never learn it exists. If more than 120 days have passed since your interview without a decision, a federal court can take the case away from USCIS entirely.
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Which tool applies depends on where your case stopped.
Interview never scheduled. There is no fixed deadline here, so the claim is the ordinary one: the delay has become unreasonable given normal processing for your field office. This is a mandamus and APA action.
Interview completed, no decision after 120 days. This is different, and much stronger. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1447(b) you may ask a federal district court to take jurisdiction over the application — and the court can grant citizenship itself rather than merely ordering USCIS to decide. It is one of the few places in immigration law where a court can deliver the benefit directly.
The clock runs from the date of your examination — in practice, the interview. Once 120 days pass without a decision, the choice is no longer only USCIS's to make. Many applicants wait years without knowing this, sending inquiries that go nowhere while a much faster remedy is available.
Most naturalization cases resolve within 4 to 6 weeks of filing. Frequently USCIS schedules the oath ceremony rather than litigate a delay it cannot justify.
A case marked for supervisory review, a pending background check, or an unresolved records issue does not stop the 120-day clock. Those are the agency's internal processes, not a legal basis to hold an application indefinitely. If your status has said the same thing for months, that consistency is itself evidence for the court.
The same is true where an oath ceremony was scheduled and then cancelled without a new date.