A second federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, adding another legal challenge to the administration’s effort to sharply raise the cost of the visa program.
U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam in Oakland, California, ruled Wednesday that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department did not follow the required rule-making procedures before putting the fee into effect. Gilliam granted a request from a coalition of unions, employers and nonprofits seeking to stop the agencies from enforcing the fee while their lawsuit moves forward.
The decision comes after a separate federal judge in Boston blocked the fee in June in a lawsuit brought by 20 states. The Boston-based appeals court declined in July to pause that ruling, leaving the fee blocked in that case as the legal fight continues.
Trump had initially imposed the $100,000 charge for certain new H-1B workers coming to the U.S. from abroad. The policy was set to expire on September 21, but the administration extended it for another year, through September 21, 2027. The fee is currently not being collected because of the court orders blocking its implementation.
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The latest lawsuit is focused in part on whether federal agencies properly followed administrative procedures when implementing the fee. Other legal challenges have questioned whether the president had the authority under federal immigration law to impose such a large payment without congressional approval.
The Department of Homeland Security has separately moved toward a permanent H-1B fee of about $103,000. Because that proposal is going through a formal rule-making process, any future legal challenge could raise different questions from those surrounding Trump’s original fee.
Democracy Forward, a legal organization representing the plaintiffs in the latest case, welcomed Gilliam’s ruling.
“Today’s decision … protects a system that was thrown into chaos overnight,” said Steve Bressler, a lawyer with the group.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has also challenged the $100,000 fee in a separate lawsuit. The business group is appealing a ruling that rejected its argument that Trump did not have the authority to impose the charge.
The H-1B program allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers for specialty occupations that require specialized knowledge. Technology companies have long been among the major users of the program.
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Federal law generally provides 65,000 H-1B visas each year, along with another 20,000 for workers with qualifying advanced degrees from U.S. institutions. H-1B visas are generally granted for an initial period of up to three years and can be extended to a total of six years.
Before Trump’s $100,000 charge, employers typically faced government fees totaling several thousand dollars for an H-1B petition, depending on factors including the type and size of the employer. The new payment represented a major increase in the cost of bringing certain foreign workers to the U.S.
The administration has defended the policy by arguing that the H-1B system has been abused and that some companies have used foreign workers as lower-cost replacements for American employees. Trump invoked presidential authority under federal immigration law to restrict the entry of certain foreign nationals when their admission is deemed detrimental to U.S. interests.
Alongside the fee, the administration has introduced tighter vetting of H-1B applicants and proposed changes to the visa selection system that would give greater weight to higher-skilled and higher-paid workers.