Federal Judge Kills Trump's $100,000 H-1B Fee

A Boston court rules the six-figure charge was an illegal tax. Thousands of foreign workers and the employers who need them are watching what happens next.

WASHINGTON — Eighty-five payments. That’s how many employers had paid Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee in the five months since it took effect — a number so low it tells its own story about what the fee was actually designed to do.

On Sunday, a federal judge in Boston confirmed what immigration lawyers, university counsel, and hospital HR departments had been arguing since September: the fee was never legal to begin with.

U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin struck down the $100,000 charge in a 42-page ruling, finding that President Trump had imposed a de facto tax on H-1B visa petitions without any authorization from Congress — and without following the basic rule-making procedures the law requires.

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What the fee was — and who it hit

Trump signed a presidential proclamation in September 2025 adding the $100,000 charge on top of the existing fees employers already pay to sponsor H-1B workers, which typically run between $2,000 and $5,000 per petition. The new fee applied to first-time petitions filed on or after Sept. 21, 2025 — meaning it fell hardest on future workers, particularly those outside the U.S. who would have entered through the 2026 lottery.

Current H-1B holders weren’t directly affected. Neither were most workers already in the country on extensions. The fee was aimed squarely at new entrants — and at the employers willing to pay to bring them here.

Most weren’t.

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The ruling

Sorokin found three distinct legal problems with the fee. It functioned as a tax — a large, round-number charge designed to raise revenue and change economic behavior, untethered to the government’s actual administrative costs. The president imposed it via proclamation, without the formal notice-and-comment rulemaking the Administrative Procedure Act requires for policy changes of that magnitude. And nothing in immigration law gave the executive branch authority to create a six-figure revenue-raising measure in the first place.

The judge leaned on a recent Supreme Court decision trimming Trump’s emergency tariff powers, reasoning by analogy that the same logic applied here: you cannot use a broadly worded entry-restriction statute to do an end-run around Congress’s exclusive constitutional authority to levy taxes.

As a remedy, Sorokin vacated the Sept. 19 proclamation, the USCIS and State Department FAQs that implemented it, related internal memoranda, and the dedicated Pay.gov portal used to collect the payments. Agencies are now barred from conditioning H-1B approvals on the fee.

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A split that points toward the Supreme Court

Sorokin’s ruling directly contradicts a federal judge in Washington, D.C., who earlier upheld the fee in a separate challenge brought by the Chamber of Commerce. That judge accepted the administration’s argument that the charge was a permissible monetary penalty tied to the president’s broad authority to restrict entry.

Two courts. One fee. Opposite answers.

That split makes a DOJ appeal to the First Circuit Court of Appeals almost certain — and a stay request likely to follow quickly. If the First Circuit grants a stay, agencies could resume collecting the fee while litigation continues. Most observers expect the case to reach the Supreme Court.

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What it means right now

For employers, the immediate effect is real: sponsorship costs revert to pre-proclamation levels. For public universities, K-12 school districts, and hospitals — institutions that couldn’t absorb a six-figure fee per worker — the ruling reopens hiring pipelines that had effectively been shut.

For foreign workers, especially recent graduates abroad who were priced out of the U.S. market entirely, the decision is a window. Whether it stays open is another question.

The 85 employers who paid the fee are in a gray zone. Refunds appear legally warranted, but no formal mechanism has been announced.

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The courts just handed a temporary reprieve to thousands of workers and the institutions that need them — but two federal judges are now pointing in opposite directions, and the Supreme Court may be the final word. This is the immigration story every employer, every university, and every foreign worker in America is watching. If that reporting matters to you, become a paid subscriber today — and send this to someone who needs to understand what's at stake: