A federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday struck down the Trump administration’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee, ruling that the charge was a tax Congress never authorized.
Trump announced the fee by presidential proclamation in September 2025, arguing that the H-1B program had displaced American workers and that employers relying on foreign labor should pay more to do it. The administration said the fee was a restriction on entry, not a tax, and that the president had full authority to impose it.
Twenty Democratic state attorneys general, led by California, filed suit in December to block the fee, arguing it was an unconstitutional tax imposed without any act of Congress.
U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin agreed.
In a 42-page opinion, Sorokin concluded that the $100,000 charge was a tax regardless of what the administration called it, and that only Congress has the power to levy taxes. He also ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the State Department not to collect the fee.
“Here, the substance and application of the $100,000 payment reveal that it is a tax, regardless of what the payment is called.”
The administration pointed to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the president authority to restrict entry of foreign nationals whose admission he deems “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” The government argued that the fee was a restriction on entry rather than a revenue measure.
Sorokin rejected that argument. He found the administration had offered no definition of a “regulatory payment,” cited no statutes or case law using the term, and given no explanation for why it differed from a tax.
“Defendants offer no definition for what constitutes ‘a regulatory payment,’ cite no cases or statutes employing the term, and advance no reasoned argument explaining how this term encompasses something different than a tax or a penalty.”
Sorokin also pointed to the Supreme Court’s February decision in Learning Resources v. Trump, which struck down Trump’s emergency tariffs on the ground that the president had no authority to impose what amounted to a tax. Sorokin concluded that the same reasoning applied: if Congress had not given the president taxing power through trade law, it had not done so through immigration law either.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said the administration would appeal and expected to win.
“President Trump has clear legal authority to restrict entry of any class of aliens he determines is not in America’s best interests, and that is exactly what he did.”
Before Trump’s proclamation, employers typically paid between $2,000 and $5,000 to sponsor an H-1B worker. The new fee increased the cost by as much as fiftyfold. By mid-February, federal filings showed only 85 employers had paid it.
The H-1B program provides 65,000 visas annually, with an additional 20,000 for workers holding advanced degrees. Technology companies, universities, hospitals, and financial firms are among the largest users of the program.
Sorokin was nominated by President Barack Obama in December 2013 and confirmed by the Senate in June 2014. He previously blocked Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit challenging Boston’s sanctuary city policies, and threw out a separate administration lawsuit seeking Massachusetts voter-roll data.
The administration is expected to appeal to the First Circuit. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pursuing a separate appeal after a federal judge in Washington declined to block the fee last year.
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