Trump's $100,000 H-1B Fee Vacated: What Employers and Applicants Need to Know

On June 8, 2026, a federal court struck down the $100,000 fee that the Trump administration had placed on certain H-1B visa petitions, ruling that the President lacked the authority to impose it. For nearly nine months, U.S. companies planning to hire skilled professionals from abroad faced a six-figure surcharge on top of standard filing costs. The court has now removed that surcharge, at least for the moment. This guide explains what the ruling does, what it does not touch, what the fee originally required, and how the situation stands for employers and prospective H-1B workers as the case moves toward appeal.

What the Court Decided

The Ruling at a Glance

U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin in Massachusetts granted summary judgment to a coalition of 20 states in the case California v. Mullin (No. 25-13829-LTS) (originally filed as California v. Noem, No. 1:25-cv-13829-LTS) and ordered the policy implementing the $100,000 payment requirement vacated in full. The decision is a ruling on the merits at the district-court level, not a temporary pause. The judge declared the policy unlawful and directed that judgment be entered for the states, a result confirmed in the court's written opinion.

The phrase that matters most for employers is "vacated in its entirety." Vacatur removes the policy from the books nationwide rather than shielding only a few parties from it. That is why the effect reaches every H-1B petition nationwide, rendering a separate state-by-state injunction unnecessary. The court considered whether to issue a separate injunction and concluded that vacatur already provided complete relief, a point summarized in the reporting on the decision.

Who Sued

The case was brought by a coalition of 20 states, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell. Their core argument was practical and grounded in their own operations as employers. State universities, public school systems, and public hospitals rely on H-1B workers to fill roles in research, teaching, medicine, and engineering. A $100,000 surcharge per worker, the states argued, would directly damage their ability to recruit and retain that talent. Framing the harm around their role as large public employers is part of what gave the states legal standing to challenge the fee.

Why the Court Struck the Fee Down

The court's central conclusion was that the $100,000 payment was a tax, and that the President cannot levy a tax without authorization from Congress. The administration argued that the President's broad executive powers over immigration policy justified the charge. The court rejected that reasoning, finding that the statutes the administration relied on let the President restrict or limit entry but do not include the power to raise revenue.

The judge reinforced this with a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued on February 20, 2026, Learning Resources v. Trump, decided by a 6 to 3 vote, that addressed a parallel question in the tariff context. In that case, the Supreme Court held that a general power to "regulate" does not by itself include the power to tax. The district court applied the same logic to immigration: words like "restrictions," "rules," and "limitations" in the immigration statutes do not, in their ordinary meaning, authorize a six-figure levy on hiring a worker.

Furthermore, the court identified problems with how the policy was created. Major rules of this kind normally require public notice and an opportunity to comment before they take effect. The administration skipped that process. On top of that, the court found the agencies had not given a reasoned explanation for the amount or considered the reliance interests of employers who had already built hiring plans around the existing system.

How the $100,000 Fee Came to Be

The September 2025 Proclamation

The fee originated in a presidential proclamation signed on September 19, 2025, which restricted the entry of certain H-1B workers unless their petition was accompanied by a $100,000 supplemental payment. The administration presented the charge as a tool to discourage what it described as overuse of the program and to push employers toward higher-paid roles. The proclamation included a 12-month sunset clause, setting the proclamation to expire in late September 2026. 

The proclamation also gave the Secretary of Homeland Security discretion to waive the fee where doing so was judged to be in the national interest. In practice, that waiver path was narrow and uncertain, which left most affected employers facing the full charge or choosing not to file at all.

Who Had to Pay, and Who Was Exempt

This is the detail that caused the most confusion, and it remains important for understanding the ruling's real-world reach. The $100,000 fee was never a blanket charge on every H-1B petition. Guidance issued after the proclamation went into effect clarified that the fee applies prospectively. Specifically, it targets two types of petitions:

• New petitions for workers who are outside the United States and do not currently hold a valid H-1B visa.
• Petitions requesting the government to notify a consulate or port of entry so the worker can enter from abroad.

The fee did not apply to a long list of common situations:

• Petitions filed before the effective date of the proclamation
• Workers who already held a valid H-1B visa stamp in their passport
• Extensions of stay for current H-1B employees
• Amendments reflecting changes in role, worksite, or terms of employment
• Change-of-employer petitions for workers already in H-1B status in the United States
• Change-of-status petitions, most notably F-1 students moving from student status to H-1B without leaving the country

USCIS guidance noted that the fee could still attach to an extension, amendment, or change-of-status petition if USCIS determined that the worker was ineligible for the requested in-country benefit and the case had to be processed at a consulate abroad.

Because change-of-status and in-country cases make up a large share of all H-1B filings, the fee in practice fell mainly on offshore hires and consular cases. That is also why the number of employers who actually paid it stayed low. The ruling is therefore most consequential for companies recruiting talent from outside the United States.

What the Ruling Means for Employers

If a Petition Is in Progress

With the policy vacated nationwide, the $100,000 payment is currently not required for an H-1B petition to be approved, unless a higher court reinstates the policy. The practical effect is that offshore and consular filings that some employers had delayed to avoid the charge are no longer subject to it while the vacatur stands.

The central variable is whether the administration obtains a stay on appeal. A stay would pause the vacatur and could bring the fee back quickly, potentially on short notice. Official updates on the policy's status are published by USCIS and the Department of Homeland Security.

If the $100,000 Was Already Paid

The ruling did not create a refund process, and there is currently no published mechanism from USCIS or DHS for returning fees that were already paid. The $100,000 payments were submitted through Pay.gov. Whether a refund pathway opens will likely depend on how the appeal is resolved, so reimbursement remains an open question rather than a settled outcome.

What It Means for H-1B Workers and Applicants

For most people who hold or are seeking H-1B status, the fee was never going to be their personal obstacle. The H-1B is an employer-sponsored visa, so any fee, including the vacated $100,000 charge, was the employer's legal responsibility, not the worker's. The fee also did not touch the cases that affect the largest number of individuals already in the country.

An F-1 student moving into H-1B status without leaving the United States was already exempt and remains unaffected. The same was true for a worker extending a current H-1B, changing employers from within the United States, or amending an existing petition. For these workers, the ruling changes nothing about eligibility, timing, or cost.

The group most directly affected are candidates being hired from abroad, since the $100,000 fee is currently not being collected. However, the $100,000 fee could return if a higher court intervenes with the vacatur. 

The H-1B Fees That Still Apply

It is worth stressing that the vacated $100,000 fee sat on top of the normal, congressionally established cost structure. Those standard fees are unchanged and still apply to every cap-subject H-1B petition. As of June 2026, and according to the USCIS fee schedule (Form G-1055, edition dated May 29, 2026), the current required government fees include the following:

• Electronic registration fee: $215 per worker, paid during the annual March registration window
• Form I-129 base filing fee: $780 for standard employers when filed on paper, or $730 when filed online, and $460 for nonprofits and small employers with 25 or fewer full-time employees
• ACWIA training fee: $1,500 for employers with 26 or more employees, or $750 for those with 1 to 25 employees, with higher-education institutions and several nonprofit and research employers exempt
• Fraud Prevention and Detection fee: $500 on new and change-of-employer petitions
• Asylum Program fee: $600 for standard employers, $300 for small employers, and $0 for nonprofits
• Premium processing (optional): $2,965 for a guaranteed adjudicative action, such as an approval, denial, request for evidence, or notice of intent to deny, within 15 business days, following the inflation adjustment that took effect March 1, 2026

A separate $4,000 fee also applies to a narrow category of large employers with more than 50 U.S. workers where more than half are in H-1B or L-1 status, a fee currently authorized through September 30, 2027. Filing fees vary by employer size and petition type, and the current amounts are listed on the USCIS fee schedule. Premium processing guarantees that USCIS will take an adjudicative action within the 15-business-day window, not that a petition will be approved, and a request for evidence or notice of intent to deny pauses and restarts that window.

Will the Fee Come Back? The Appeal and a Conflicting Ruling

This ruling is not the end of the story. Two things make the outcome uncertain.

First, the administration has stated that it intends to appeal and expects the decision to be reversed. DHS criticized the ruling sharply, and immigration practitioners can broadly expect the government to move quickly, including a possible request to pause the vacatur while the appeal is pending. If a court grants that pause, the $100,000 charge could apply again to affected petitions during the appeal.

Second, this is not the only court to weigh in. In December 2025, a different federal judge in Washington, D.C., Judge Beryl A. Howell, upheld the same fee in Chamber of Commerce v. DHS, reaching the opposite conclusion about the President's authority. That December decision is itself on appeal before the D.C. Circuit, and the split between courts is one of the reasons the issue is likely headed to a higher court for a definitive answer. Notably, the Massachusetts ruling came after the Supreme Court's February 20, 2026 tariff decision in Learning Resources v. Trump, which the judge treated as central to the delegation analysis, while the earlier D.C. ruling predated it.

There is also the proclamation's own expiration. Because the underlying restriction was written to lapse roughly a year after it began, the fee question could become moot for new petitions later in 2026 regardless of how the appeal unfolds, unless the administration extends it. For now, the fee is not being collected, but the situation can change on short notice.

How Alma Helps Employers Manage H-1B Filings

File H-1B Petitions With Confidence, Whatever the Fee Landscape

Policy shifts like this one make in-house immigration planning harder. Alma is an attorney-led, technology-enabled platform built for companies that hire global talent. When a company files an H-1B petition through Alma, a dedicated attorney prepares the case, the team tracks every status update in one dashboard, and timelines are provided directly rather than through email replies. Alma's transparent pricing covers attorney expertise, paralegal support, platform access, compliance tracking, and employee communication, and the case fee includes responses to Requests for Evidence rather than billing for them separately. Government filing fees, which vary by visa type, are charged separately and passed through at cost. For an H-1B cap or cap-exempt case, Alma's flat fee is $3,500, with H-1B extensions, amendments, and change-of-employer filings at $3,000 each. Volume discounts and preferred rates are available for companies managing larger foreign national populations and for partners such as portfolio companies of leading startup accelerators.

Because the H-1B program continues to shift between proclamations, fee rules, and court rulings, the value of working with an experienced team is in the clarity it provides. An attorney-led platform tracks these changes and explains how they apply to each specific case. Schedule a consultation to discuss H-1B hiring plans with an experienced immigration attorney.