BOSTON – A federal judge on Monday struck down a $100,000 fee U.S. President Donald Trump imposed on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, concluding that it constituted an unlawful tax Congress never approved.
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The administration announced the much-higher fee as a way of preventing foreign workers from taking American jobs.
Judge strikes down $100K visa fee requirement
Big picture view:
The decision was issued by U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston in response to a lawsuit brought by 20 Democratic state attorneys general.
The lawsuit challenged the fee, announced by Trump in September, which significantly increased the cost of securing H-1B visas.
The U.S. Department Of Homeland Security logo is displayed on a sign at a Citizenship and Immigration Services office on January 16, 2026 in San Diego, CA. (Credit: Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
The judge concluded that the executive branch exceeded its authority and violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies develop and issue regulations.
“The Court finds that the Policy imposes a tax on H-1B petitions without the requisite delegation by Congress,” Sorokin wrote.
What they’re saying:
The administration argued the fee constituted a lawful monetary penalty that the president was authorized to impose under federal immigration law, which gives him the power to restrict the entry of certain foreign nationals when he deems it “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement that the Trump administration is confident Sorokin’s order will be reversed on appeal.
“President Trump has clear legal authority to restrict entry of any class of aliens he determines is not in America’s best interests, and that is exactly what he did,” she said, according to Reuters.
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The other side:
But Sorokin concluded that the fee was not a penalty but a tax that the Republican president lacked any authorization from Congress to issue and that the U.S. State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services could not implement.
“Here, the substance and application of the $100,000 payment reveal that it is a tax, regardless of what the payment is called,” wrote Sorokin.
About H-1B program
The backstory:
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the H-1B program applies to employers seeking to hire non-immigrants as workers in specialty occupations of distinguished merit and ability.
The law establishes certain standards in order to protect similarly employed U.S. workers from being adversely affected by the employment of the nonimmigrant workers, as well as to protect the H-1B nonimmigrant workers.
The H-1B program offers 65,000 visas annually, with another 20,000 visas for workers with advanced degrees, approved for three to six years.
Technology companies in particular rely heavily on workers who receive H-1B visas, with nearly three-quarters of approvals going to workers from India.
The states argued that using the H-1B program to fill vacancies for much-needed doctors and teachers was already difficult before the higher fee.
Employers seeking a visa for a foreign worker before Trump’s proclamation typically paid about $2,000 to $5,000 in fees depending on various factors, according to Rueters. The fee does not apply to visas granted to foreign citizens already in the United States on student visas, who generally make up a large share of new H-1B recipients.
The increase in fees has discouraged H-1B visa requests, according to court filings. As of February 15, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had received just 85 payments of the $100,000 fee, the administration said in a March filing.
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