A federal judge in California has issued a second nationwide block against President Donald Trump’s $100,000 payment requirement for certain new H-1B petitions, ruling that immigration agencies failed to use required federal rulemaking procedures.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A second federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from enforcing its $100,000 payment requirement for certain new H-1B visa petitions, handing employers and immigration groups another victory in the continuing legal fight over the president’s effort to overhaul the skilled-worker program.
U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. of the Northern District of California ruled Wednesday that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and Customs and Border Protection failed to comply with federal administrative procedures when implementing President Donald Trump’s September 2025 proclamation.
Gilliam, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, barred enforcement of the agency policies implementing the payment while the case proceeds.
The Sept. 30 ruling in Global Nurse Force v. Trump provides a separate legal barrier to enforcement after a federal judge in Massachusetts struck down the same $100,000 requirement in June.
The California case was brought by a coalition that includes labor unions, health care providers, educational organizations, religious groups and employers represented by Democracy Forward and other legal organizations.
The plaintiffs challenged Trump’s 2025 proclamation and the federal agencies’ subsequent implementation of it, arguing that the administration could not impose such a substantial financial requirement without going through procedures required by the Administrative Procedure Act.
Gilliam agreed with the challengers on key procedural claims, concluding they were likely to establish that federal agencies improperly bypassed notice-and-comment rulemaking.
The decision also applies to Trump’s recent extension of the $100,000 requirement through September 2027.
Trump renewed the restriction Sept. 18, extending it for another 12 months after declaring that conditions he said justified the original policy remained in place.
The original proclamation, issued Sept. 19, 2025, restricted entry of certain H-1B workers unless their petitions were accompanied or supplemented by a $100,000 payment, subject to national-interest exemptions.
The administration said the policy was intended to discourage employers from using lower-paid foreign workers in place of Americans and to refocus the H-1B program on highly skilled, highly compensated workers.
Trump invoked Sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, provisions granting presidents substantial authority to restrict entry of certain foreign nationals when their admission is deemed detrimental to U.S. interests.
The White House has maintained that some information technology outsourcing and staffing companies have used the H-1B program to suppress wages and displace American employees.
In extending the requirement, Trump said registrations submitted by major IT outsourcing companies had declined dramatically since the payment was introduced and said the policy was helping redirect the visa program toward higher-skilled positions.
The administration said more than 700 petitions had been accompanied by the $100,000 payment since the original proclamation took effect.
The plaintiffs have challenged both the president’s underlying authority and the way executive agencies put the policy into effect.
Gilliam’s ruling centered largely on the latter.
The agencies issued guidance implementing the president’s proclamation without first going through the ordinary notice-and-comment rulemaking process required for many substantive federal regulations.
The court found the challengers were likely to show that the policies imposed significant new obligations on employers and therefore could not simply be implemented as informal guidance.
Gilliam also faulted agencies for failing to adequately assess the policy’s impact on small businesses, consider less disruptive alternatives and account for employers’ reliance on the pre-existing H-1B system.
The ruling vacated the challenged implementation policies and prevents federal officials from using them to collect or enforce the $100,000 payment while the agencies have not completed lawful rulemaking.
The outcome does not permanently resolve whether a president can use immigration law to condition admission of certain H-1B workers on a large payment.
Instead, it creates another independent barrier against implementation while broader legal questions move through the courts.
The decision follows an earlier and differently reasoned ruling from Boston.
On June 8, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin ruled in a case brought by 20 states that the $100,000 payment amounted to a tax that had not been authorized by Congress.
The court also concluded the administration had exceeded its statutory authority and violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
The Massachusetts attorney general’s office described the decision as vacating the policy nationwide.
The Trump administration appealed.
On July 24, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to suspend Sorokin’s decision while that appeal proceeds, meaning the Boston ruling has continued to prevent collection of the payment.
Gilliam’s California ruling now creates a second independent injunction against enforcement.
The legal landscape remains complicated because a third federal judge previously sided with the administration.
In December 2025, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington rejected a separate challenge brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Association of American Universities.
Howell concluded that federal immigration statutes gave the president sufficiently broad authority to impose the entry restriction.
The Chamber appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where the case remains pending. The Chamber’s case record lists the appeal under docket number 25-5473.
The conflicting district court decisions leave multiple appellate courts considering different aspects of the administration’s policy.
The H-1B program permits U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign professionals in jobs requiring specialized knowledge, including positions in technology, engineering, medicine, research and education.
Federal law generally provides 65,000 new cap-subject H-1B visas each fiscal year, with an additional 20,000 slots available for qualifying workers who have earned advanced degrees from U.S. institutions.
Universities and certain nonprofit or research employers can qualify for exemptions from the annual cap.
Before the Trump proclamation, employers generally faced several thousand dollars in federal H-1B filing and related fees depending on the petition and employer.
The $100,000 requirement dramatically increased that potential cost for petitions covered by the proclamation.
The administration narrowed the policy through subsequent guidance, including exemptions involving some people already lawfully inside the United States and a process allowing DHS to determine that particular workers, companies or industries qualify for national-interest exemptions.
Businesses, universities, hospitals and other challengers argued the financial burden could prevent smaller organizations from recruiting workers they say cannot readily be replaced domestically.
“Today’s decision … protects a system that was thrown into chaos overnight,” Democracy Forward attorney Steve Bressler said following Gilliam’s ruling.
The White House had not immediately issued a response to Wednesday’s decision.
The administration is simultaneously pursuing a different route to establishing a similarly large H-1B charge.
In August, DHS formally proposed a separate $103,265 fee for H-1B petitions subject to the annual cap.
Unlike the presidential proclamation, that proposal is proceeding through the federal notice-and-comment rulemaking process.
The proposed regulation says the fee would help recover government costs associated with administering the lawful immigration system across USCIS, DHS, the State Department, the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor.
DHS specifically described the proposed $103,265 charge as separate from the $100,000 presidential payment.
Under the proposal, if both requirements were ultimately lawful and applicable to the same petition, an employer potentially could be required to pay both.
The proposed DHS fee would apply to cap-subject H-1B petitions, including those eligible for the advanced-degree exemption, rather than every H-1B filing.
That distinction means the new rulemaking presents legal questions different from those at the center of the current lawsuits.
The cases challenging Trump’s proclamation primarily ask whether the president possessed authority to establish the $100,000 payment and whether federal agencies lawfully implemented his directive.
A finalized DHS regulation would instead rest on agency fee-setting authority and would have gone through the formal regulatory process Gilliam said was missing from implementation of the presidential policy.
Trump has also ordered additional changes to the H-1B program beyond the disputed payment.
On Sept. 18, he directed immigration and labor agencies to increase information sharing and examine whether companies seeking H-1B workers have recently laid off, or intend to lay off, similarly situated American workers.
The administration has separately changed the H-1B selection process to give greater weight to higher-paid and higher-skilled applicants rather than relying exclusively on random selection when demand exceeds available visas.
The White House says the combined policies are intended to protect American workers while preserving access to foreign workers with specialized skills.
Opponents argue that extremely high fees could instead push jobs and investment overseas, hurt small employers and make it difficult for hospitals, schools, universities and other organizations to recruit specialized workers.
Those larger policy questions remain contested.
The immediate legal effect of Wednesday’s decision is narrower: the federal agencies responsible for administering H-1B visas cannot enforce Trump’s $100,000 payment requirement through the challenged implementation policies.
With the Massachusetts ruling already in effect, employers are now protected by two separate federal court decisions while appeals and
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