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Second judge blocks Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa fee
A federal judge in Oakland blocked Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa fee, ruling agencies skipped required rule-making; a Boston judge issued a similar block in June.
Why it matters
A second US federal judge has blocked the $100,000 fee President Donald Trump imposed on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers. US District Judge Haywood Gilliam in Oakland, California, ruled on Wednesday that US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department failed to follow the necessary rule-making processes before implementing the fee.
Full report
Gilliam, an Obama appointee, granted a request by a coalition of unions, employers and nonprofits to block the agencies from implementing Trump's fee pending the outcome of a lawsuit they filed in October. The $100,000 fee had already been temporarily blocked in June by a federal judge in Boston, in a separate case brought by 20 states; a Boston-based appeals court in July declined to pause that decision. A third lawsuit challenging the fee was filed by the US Chamber of Commerce, the country's largest business lobbying group.
The Department of Homeland Security moved in August to adopt a permanent fee of about $103,000 that, when finalized, will likely face its own court challenges — involving different legal issues than the lawsuits over Trump's fee, which focus on whether the president can set such a fee unilaterally. The $100,000 fee was originally set to expire September 21 but Trump recently extended it for another year.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Democracy Forward, the legal group representing the plaintiffs, applauded the ruling; its lawyer Steve Bressler said the decision "protects a system that was thrown into chaos overnight." Source: Reuters (Daniel Wiessner), September 30, 2026.
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