President Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on September 19, 2025 in Washington, DC.
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A federal judge on Monday canceled President Donald Trump’s $100,000 fee on his employer’s H-1B visa application.
Judge Leo Sorokin, in a ruling in the U.S. District Court in Boston, declared that the policy of charging high fees for high-skilled worker visas violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution.
The Trump administration plans to appeal the ruling.
“Every day, thousands of people on H-1B visas serve New Yorkers as doctors, teachers, and other skilled workers,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of 20 states that filed the lawsuit.
“Today the court puts an end to the current administration’s unlawful attempt to destroy this important program and the many jobs it enables,” James said.
“The nature and use of the $100,000 payment make it clear that it is a tax,” Sorokin said, agreeing with the states’ view that Congress did not delegate that authority to the executive branch.
The judge cited a precedent in February when the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs on the grounds that Trump lacked legal authority to impose them.
In this case, the high court ruled that the duties assessed by the Department of Homeland Security “constitute a tax for purposes of the taxation provisions of the Constitution,” Sorokin noted. The Department of Homeland Security is a defendant in the H-1B case.
The H-1B policy was created in 1990 and is heavily used by major U.S. tech companies to attract highly skilled workers from overseas. The program allows U.S. employers to ask the government for permission to hire nonimmigrant workers in specialized occupations for up to six years.
Trump introduced the $100,000 fee in his presidential proclamation last September. He claimed that the H-1B visa program is being abused and harming the U.S. economy and national security through “massive displacement of American workers.”
Before the change, H-1B visa fees ranged from $2,000 to $5,000 per application, CNBC previously reported.
Several companies, including Walmart, announced they would suspend participation in the H-1B program in response to President Trump’s proclamation.
The program has a cap of 65,000 visas per year, with an additional 20,000 for those who have earned a master’s or doctoral degree from a U.S. institution. But the Trump administration disclosed in a March filing that as of February 15, there had been only 85 payments of $100,000 in fees.
“President Trump has clear legal authority to restrict the entry of any type of alien that he deems not to be in the best interests of the United States, and that is exactly what the President has done,” White House Press Secretary Taylor Rogers told CNBC in a statement after Monday’s ruling.
“The H-1B program has been abused for decades, but President Trump has finally taken action to fix it. A federal judge in Washington has already upheld a nearly identical order, and the administration is confident it will be reversed on appeal,” Rogers said.
The lawsuit was filed in December against the Trump administration and multiple government officials. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed its own lawsuit in October challenging the $100,000 H-1B visa policy.
