United States: California Federal Court Issues Preliminary Injunction Against the $100,000 H-1B Fee

Judge Haywood Gilliam, Jr., of the Federal District Court in the Northern District of California has issued a preliminary injunction that prohibits the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from implementing the $100,000 H-1B fee ordered by presidential proclamation in late 2025.

The court determined that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their claims that DHS’s guidance on implementation of the fee was arbitrary and capricious and that the agency failed to engage in proper notice-and-comment rulemaking in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. The case is Global Nurse Force, et al., v. Trump, Case No. 25-cv-08454 (N.D. Cal., filed October 3, 2025).

The ruling is the second to block DHS’s implementation of the fee.  In a separate case, a federal district judge in State of California et al. v Markwayne Mullin, et al., Case No., 1:25-cv-13829 (D. Mass., filed Dec. 12, 2025), vacated the $100,000 fee policy in its entirety, taking the position that the $100,000 fee amounted to a tax, for which the presidential proclamation establishing the fee and USCIS implementation were not a proper exercise of power, and also ruling that the policy violated the Administrative Procedure Act. That court stayed its own ruling temporarily while the government appealed that decision, but a federal court of appeals refused to block the lower court’s ruling. In an earlier case, Chamber of Commerce v. DHS, Case No. 1:25-cv-03675 (D.D.C., filed October 16, 2025), a federal district judge in Washington, D.C., declined to block the fee.