Second Judge Blocks $100,000 H-1B Fee as Vance Says He Would End the Program

A second federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas, ruling that the agencies imposed it without the notice-and-comment process required by law. The same day, Vice President JD Vance said he would support eliminating the program.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. issued the order Wednesday in Oakland, California. Gilliam, an Obama appointee, granted a preliminary injunction to a coalition of unions, employers, and nonprofits in Global Nurse Force v. Trump. The order stops U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department from collecting the fee while the case proceeds.

Gilliam held that the agencies implemented the charge through internal guidance rather than the Administrative Procedure Act’s public-comment process. The order covers both the original proclamation and the extension President Trump signed on Sept. 18. That extension would have kept the fee in place for another year after the original Sept. 21 expiration.

The plaintiffs include Global Nurse Force, a California firm that recruits nurses, along with rural medical practices, a tribal K-12 school, manufacturers, schools, and labor groups. Their lawyers argued the fee halted hiring overnight and caused irreparable harm. Jesse Bless, counsel for IMMpact Litigation, said the court made clear that “no agency policy lawfully requires the payment.”

This is the second court to stop the fee. On June 8, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston sided with 20 states led by California and struck the charge down. Sorokin wrote that the policy “imposes a tax on H-1B petitions without the requisite delegation by Congress” and also violated the Administrative Procedure Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit declined in July to pause that ruling.

Because the Boston order already blocks collection nationwide, the California decision does not change what employers pay today. It does add a second holding, on different procedural grounds, that the agencies cannot enforce the fee while the lawsuits continue.

The Department of Homeland Security in August began a separate rulemaking for a permanent fee of about $103,000. That proposal, once finalized, would face its own challenges. The current suits target the president’s power to set the charge by proclamation.

The H-1B program provides 65,000 visas a year, plus 20,000 for workers with advanced degrees, typically valid for three to six years. Technology companies are the largest users. Nearly three-quarters of approvals go to workers from India. As of a Feb. 15 filing, USCIS had received 85 payments totaling $8.5 million before the courts intervened.

Vance addressed the program Thursday in an interview with Jack Posobiec aboard Air Force Two, broadcast by Real America’s Voice. “My view is the H-1B program is completely broken, and I’d be very supportive of just eliminating it,” he said.

He said the visa has been “totally taken advantage of — not just by technology companies — by accounting firms, by people who are basically defrauding the American worker.” Bringing in “a genius,” he said, is a separate conversation. Replacing an American accountant making $60,000 with a foreign accountant making $45,000, he said, is “destroying American jobs.”

Vance said the administration inherited “40 years of bad policy” on offshoring and foreign labor, and that the $100,000 fee is the most any administration has done on H-1B. He told viewers to press Congress to change the statute. “Meanwhile, we in the Trump administration are trying to at least make it less fraudulent.”

The White House has not said whether it will appeal Gilliam’s order. The Boston ruling is already on appeal. Until one of those cases is reversed, the $100,000 charge remains unenforceable.