Appeals court keeps Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa fee blocked

The Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals refused on Friday to revive President Trump's $100,000 fee on new H-1B work visas, dealing a second legal setback to an administration effort that has directly disrupted how technology companies hire skilled workers from overseas.

A three-judge panel declined to pause a lower court ruling that blocked the fee while the government's appeal proceeds. The panel found that the administration had failed to show it was likely to succeed in arguing that the president had legal authority to impose the charge — a threshold test for winning an emergency stay.

Why the fee was struck down

The underlying ruling came from US District Judge Leo Sorokin in June, who found that the $100,000 payment functioned as a tax rather than a regulatory fee, regardless of how the administration labeled it. "The substance and application of the $100,000 payment reveal that it is a tax," Sorokin wrote — and under the US Constitution, the power to levy taxes belongs to Congress, not the executive branch. The lawsuit that produced that ruling was brought by 20 Democratic state attorneys general.

Trump announced the fee in September 2025 as part of a broader immigration crackdown, arguing at the time that the H-1B program "has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor." Before the policy, employers typically paid between roughly $2,000 and $5,000 in H-1B visa-related fees — a fraction of the proposed increase.

Real-world impact on tech hiring

The H-1B program issues around 65,000 visas annually, plus another 20,000 reserved for workers with advanced degrees, and is heavily relied on by technology companies to recruit specialized overseas talent. Court filings cited in reporting on the case show the fee sharply reduced demand for new visa applications — by mid-February, US Citizenship and Immigration Services had received only a small number of payments at the new rate.

Brian Hunt, an immigration policy compliance lawyer at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, told Business Insider that the practical effect of the appeals court's decision is limited in scope, since most US employers hire H-1B workers who are already living in the country rather than filing brand-new applications from abroad. Even so, he noted the ruling means "there are some workers who were about to lose their job offer but can now get a visa after all."

What happens next

The appeals court's decision does not resolve the underlying legal question — it only denies the administration's request to keep collecting the fee while its full appeal is heard. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment following the ruling. Until a final decision is reached, employers filing new H-1B petitions can proceed under the pre-2025 fee structure, restoring a predictable cost for a visa category that a large share of the technology sector depends on for hiring engineers, researchers, and other specialized roles, as first reported by Business Insider.