Second judge blocks Trump's $100,000 fee for new H-1B worker visas

US District Judge Haywood Gilliam in Oakland, California, on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration’s unprecedented $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, ruling that US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department failed to follow required rule-making procedures before imposing it (Reuters).

Gilliam, appointed by former president Barack Obama, granted a request from a coalition of unions, employers and nonprofits to bar the agencies from implementing the fee while their lawsuit, filed in October, proceeds. Bloomberg Law reports the agencies are enjoined from enforcing or implementing the fee policies until notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act takes place (Bloomberg Law).

It is the second district court ruling against the fee. A federal judge in Boston blocked it in June in a separate case brought by 20 states, and an appeals court in July declined to pause that decision.

The $100,000 fee was set to expire on Sept 21, but Trump extended it for another year. The Department of Homeland Security moved in August to adopt a permanent fee of about $103,000, a separate measure expected to face its own court challenge.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Democracy Forward lawyer Steve Bressler, who represents the plaintiffs, said: “Today’s decision … protects a system that was thrown into chaos overnight.”