US appeals court blocks Trump's $100K H-1B visa fee

A federal appeals court in Boston dealt the Trump administration a legal loss on Friday, refusing to revive a $100,000 fee the government had tried to impose on employers sponsoring new H-1B visa workers. The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals left standing a June ruling that found the fee unlawful, rejecting an emergency request from the administration to suspend the decision while it continues fighting the case. In their decision, the three-judge panel concluded that the government had not demonstrated it was likely to succeed on appeal—a significant hurdle for any administration seeking to overturn a lower court's judgment.

The fee had been announced by Trump in September through a presidential proclamation, framed as a corrective measure against what he characterized as systematic abuse of the H-1B program. His stated concern was that employers were using the visa category to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor rather than filling genuine skill gaps. "The H-1B program has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor," Trump said when introducing the measure. The $100,000 charge applied only to new applicants from overseas; foreign nationals already in the United States on student visas—who represent a substantial portion of H-1B recipients—were exempt from the new cost.

The legal challenge came from twenty Democratic state attorneys general, who argued that the administration had effectively created a new tax without seeking congressional approval. A district court judge agreed with their reasoning, determining that the fee exceeded what the executive branch was constitutionally permitted to do. The H-1B program itself is a long-standing mechanism that allows employers to hire skilled foreign professionals; it distributes 65,000 visas annually, plus an additional 20,000 for applicants holding advanced degrees from American universities. Before this fee was introduced, employers typically paid between $2,000 and $5,000 in government fees to sponsor an H-1B worker.

The appeals court's refusal to lift the injunction means the higher fee remains blocked for now, preserving the existing cost structure while the administration pursues further legal action. Court documents indicate that only a small number of employers have actually paid the $100,000 fee since it took effect, suggesting the policy's practical impact has been limited so far. The decision leaves the administration's broader challenge to the ruling still pending, but the immediate setback signals that the courts are skeptical of the government's constitutional authority to impose such a charge without legislative action. For technology companies and other industries that rely on H-1B workers, the ruling provides temporary stability in their hiring costs, though the legal battle itself remains unresolved.