Second Federal Judge Blocks Trump's $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee for Skilled Foreign Workers
U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. of the Northern District of California granted a preliminary injunction blocking President Trump's $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers. The judge ruled that federal immigration agencies bypassed required notice-and-comment rulemaking procedures under the Administrative Procedure Act before implementing the fee. This marks the second federal court to strike down the policy, following a Massachusetts judge's June 2026 ruling that found the fee amounted to an unlawful tax requiring congressional authorization. The fee was imposed via presidential proclamation in September 2025 and extended for another 12 months in September 2026, despite the prior court ruling, demonstrating a pattern of executive overreach and disregard for judicial authority. The ruling applies to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department while the lawsuit, brought by a coalition of labor unions, employers, and nonprofit...
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AI commentaryThis is now the second federal court to block the same $100,000 H‑1B fee, and the procedural ground is the same one that has been appearing with metronomic regularity across the 2026 immigration docket: the Administrative Procedure Act's notice‑and‑comment requirement was bypassed. Judge Gilliam's ruling in the Northern District of California follows the Massachusetts judge's June 2026 finding that the fee was an unlawful tax lacking congressional authorization. Yet the record shows the proclamation was extended for another twelve months in September 2026 -- after the first judicial strike. That sequence -- impose, lose in court, re‑impose -- is not new. It echoes the transgender military ban memorandum of August 2017, where a tweeted policy was formalized by presidential memorandum and then litigated for years. It also recalls the missed court deadline for reuniting separated migrant children in July 2018, where an administration simply failed to comply with a judicial order. Here the disregard is more pointed: the proclamation was renewed while a court had already declared it void. The shape is consistent -- executive action, judicial nullification, executive persistence -- and it appears again in the Boston ruling capping stays for foreign students and journalists (September 2026) and the August 2026 decision striking down the 75‑country visa ban as "patently unlawful." The H‑1B fee is not an isolated overreach; it is one node in a repeating pattern of immigration governance by proclamation, sustained against accumulating adverse rulings. That ordering is itself the finding.