Trump’s $100K H-1B Visa Fee May Be Here to Stay

After the Trump administration imposed a $100,000 fee on temporary visas for high-skilled workers, one immigration lobbyist confidently predicted, “Someone’s going to file suit, and when they win there’s going to be egg on a bunch of people’s faces.”

But so far, there’s no egg.

In December 2025, Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the $100,000 fee for the H-1B visa, citing the president’s broad authority to restrict noncitizens’ entry to the country. That isn’t the end of the matter—the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear a fast-tracked appeal, and similar lawsuits are pending elsewhere. Still, this decision may portend difficulties for the raft of suits challenging the fee.

H-1B Program Background

The H-1B visa program allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations on a temporary basis. It is designed to help employers gain access to skills not available among American workers.

To be eligible for the visa, workers usually must possess “theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge” and related higher education. “Fashion models of distinguished merit and ability”—such as now First Lady Melania Trump—also qualify.

But the program comes with limitations. Employers seeking to participate must attest that their hiring of foreign workers does not adversely affect working conditions for American workers. They must pay their foreign workers above a certain threshold. And the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)—the behemoth statutory framework governing immigration and citizenship—caps the total number of new H-1B visas at 85,000, with limited exceptions for employers such as universities.

Even before Trump announced his fee, participation in the H-1B program wasn’t free. Employers seeking to hire H-1B workers “could pay upwards of several thousands of dollars in statutory and regulatory fees,” according to Judge Howell’s opinion.

The H-1B program has been a boon to the tech industry in particular. Major tech companies dominate the list of H-1B employers, and roughly two-thirds of H-1B visa holders work in computer-related jobs. Supporters of the program say H-1B holders help U.S. companies to flourish, thereby creating jobs for Americans and boosting national prosperity.

But the program has long prompted controversy. Some commentators argue that companies use the program to replace American workers with foreign workers, many of whom possess only ordinary skills available in the domestic workforce. The result, they say, is fewer opportunities and lower wages for American workers, especially in the tech sector.

Legal Background on the Fee

In September 2025, President Trump announced via proclamation that the United States would impose a $100,000 fee on H-1B petitions for workers seeking entry to the country.

Trump cited two INA provisions as authority for the fee. Section 1182(f) allows the president to “impose ... any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate” on the entry of noncitizens if he finds their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” Section 1185(a) gives the president broad authority to make “reasonable rules, regulations, and orders” and to prescribe “limitations and exceptions” regarding the entry of noncitizens.

The fee would make it much harder for employers to hire H-1B workers—and that was the point. In Trump’s view, “systemic abuse” of the H-1B program had diminished job opportunities for American tech workers and “present[ed] a national security threat by discouraging Americans from pursuing careers in science and technology.”

“It is therefore necessary to impose higher costs on companies seeking to use the H-1B program in order to address the abuse of that program while still permitting companies to hire the best of the best temporary foreign workers,” Trump said in the proclamation.

Opponents of the “cost-prohibitive” fee have argued it would hamper innovation, slow economic growth, and contribute to the nation’s doctor shortage. Some commenters have also expressed concern that the fee would harm the United States’s relationship with India, which is the birth country of a majority of H-1B visa holders.

Procedural Background and U.S. District Court Opinion

The $100,000 fee soon faced legal challenges. Less than a month after Trump’s proclamation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—the world’s largest business federation—and the Association of American Universities—a group representing 69 universities—sued the Trump administration in the D.C. district court.

The plaintiffs argued that the proclamation exceeded the president’s authority and violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the statute authorizing courts to hold certain actions by federal agencies unlawful (discussed further below). They sought either a preliminary injunction or summary judgment to block the administration from enforcing the fee.

The defendants—the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and their secretaries—countered that the $100,000 fee was perfectly lawful. They argued that Section 1182(f) gives the president “extraordinarily broad discretion” to bar noncitizens from entry whenever he finds their admission detrimental to the country’s interests. They sought summary judgment or dismissal of the lawsuit.

Judge Howell—an Obama appointee on the D.C. district court—sided with the defendants. Under a “straightforward reading” of congressional statutes, she wrote, the fee is lawful. She first addressed an unusual standing issue before analyzing whether Trump acted within his authority.

Standing

Before digging into the meat of the case, Howell analyzed whether the plaintiffs had standing—that is, a sufficient stake in the issue—to sue. To sue, an organization acting as a plaintiff in a case must identify a member who has been harmed. But big businesses were unwilling to be named “in the current environment,” the Chamber of Commerce’s attorney told Howell. That appeared to be an oblique way of saying businesses feared retaliation from the administration.

“That Chamber members in the business community are reluctant to be identified by name in a court proceeding as challenging actions by the current administration is startling,” Howell wrote in a footnote.

Luckily for the Chamber, the Association of American Universities’s members had fewer qualms about being named. And one, Arizona State University, happened to be a Chamber member as well, giving both plaintiffs standing.

Extent of Presidential Authority

Next came the key question: Did Trump have the statutory authority to impose the fee? Howell concluded that he did. Her analysis focused on Section 1182(f) of the INA, the narrower of the two provisions Trump cited. In her analysis, she referenced Trump v. Hawaii, the 2018 case in which the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s ban on travel from certain countries and observed that Section 1182(f) “exudes deference to the President in every clause.”

Howell determined that Trump had met the Section 1182(f) prerequisites. First, Trump had made a “find[ing]” that the entry of certain noncitizens “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” And because judges have traditionally deferred to the executive in the realms of international affairs and national security, Howell declined to second-guess that judgment. She concluded that the president had stated his finding explicitly, even backing it up with statistics.

Second, Trump had restricted entry for a valid class of aliens. Section 1182(f) allows the president to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” or “impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions” if the other requirements are met. In the plaintiffs’ view, a class “linked only by the circumstance that their U.S. employers are either unwilling or unable to pay $100,000” was no class at all. Yet Howell wasn’t convinced that the statute’s language required the president to single out a particular class if he was merely restricting, not fully suspending, entry. Even if it did, she wrote, Trump had met the requirement: Classes can be “broadly and generally defined.”

Howell then concluded that Trump hadn’t overstepped his statutory authority in imposing the fee. The plaintiffs argued it was a stretch to read Section 1182(f) as allowing the president to impose requirements on domestic employers, raise revenue, or levy visa fees. Howell disagreed. Section 1182(f) lets the president impose “any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate”—including a $100,000 fee. Moreover, Howell said, excluding noncitizens from the country implicates the executive’s power over foreign affairs. The fee thus fell comfortably within Trump’s authority.

Yet that authority has its limits, Howell noted. Entry restrictions under Section 1182(f) must be temporary, lasting only “for such period as [the president] shall deem necessary” (though the president isn’t required to set a fixed end date in advance). They may not apply to noncitizens already within the United States. And they may not expressly override INA provisions. Howell held, however, that imposing a new $100,000 fee and functionally reducing visa numbers didn’t expressly conflict with any congressional statutes regarding fees or visa caps.

APA Analysis

The case raised a tricky question about whether APA review was even available. The APA allows courts to review final actions taken by agencies, though not presidential actions. Whether courts may review agency actions taken to implement presidential actions remains unsettled in the D.C. Circuit.

Howell sidestepped that question, noting that even if implementing the fee constituted a final agency action, she couldn’t set it aside under the APA. Since Trump’s proclamation was legally authorized, implementing it wasn’t arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law. Quite the opposite: The Departments of State and Homeland Security were required to follow a lawful presidential directive.

Howell stressed that she didn’t intend “to dismiss or discount the past and ongoing contributions of H-1B workers to the American economy.” The wisdom of the H-1B fee simply wasn’t a question for courts.

“[T]he relevant analysis focuses on constitutional and statutory powers, not economic policy,” she wrote.

What Happens Next?

Of course, the D.C. Circuit may see the case differently. A three-judge panel—Judges Patricia Millett, Florence Y. Pan, and Bradley N. Garcia—will hear the appeal on an expedited basis. The appellants’ brief frames the fee as “a blatant violation of the separation of powers” because it usurps Congress’s power to raise revenue and enact immigration policy. Among the brief’s signatories is legendary conservative lawyer Paul D. Clement, a former solicitor general.

Meanwhile, at least two other lawsuits challenging the H-1B fee remain ongoing. In October 2025, an international nurse recruitment agency—along with other employers and affected parties—brought Global Nurse Force v. Trump in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. In December 2025, 20 state attorneys general filed California v. Noem in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

It’s especially worth keeping an eye on the case in California federal court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where that case would be appealed, has interpreted the INA in a separate case as giving the president less power to impose entry restrictions if he is addressing “purely domestic” issues rather than those with foreign affairs implications. In that case, the court concluded that restricting the entry of immigrants lacking health insurance did not implicate the president’s foreign affairs powers because that restriction’s purpose was to lower costs for domestic health care providers and taxpayers.

Howell and other judges have rejected that distinction, observing that restricting the entry of foreigners inherently implicates foreign affairs. Yet slippery as that distinction may be, it could strengthen the case against a fee aimed at shaping the domestic labor market.

The wisdom of the H-1B fee remains contested, and so does its legality. For now, though, Howell’s decision reaffirms that the president has broad discretion to impose entry restrictions on noncitizens.