Second federal judge blocks Trump’s $100,000 fee for H-1B visas

A second federal judge has blocked the unprecedented $100,000 fee that U.S. President Donald Trump imposed on new H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers, as Reuters reports. District Judge Haywood Gilliam, based in Oakland, California, ruled that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the State Department had not followed the necessary legal rulemaking procedures before implementing the fee.

Gilliam, appointed by former President Barack Obama, granted the request of a coalition of unions, employers and non-profit organisations to block enforcement of the fee until the conclusion of the lawsuit they filed in October, according to Reuters.

The fee was also temporarily blocked in June by a federal judge in Boston, in a separate case brought by 20 states; an appeals court in Boston refused in July to suspend that ruling. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security began procedures in August to impose a permanent fee of about $103,000, which when finalised is likely to be challenged in court — but different legal questions will be raised there than in the lawsuits against the fee imposed by Trump’s order, which focus on the president’s power to impose the fee unilaterally.

The $100,000 fee was due to expire on September 21, but Trump recently extended it for another year, according to Reuters. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The legal group Democracy Forward, which represents the plaintiffs, welcomed the ruling: lawyer Steve Bressler said “today’s ruling protects a system that was thrown into chaos overnight”. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest business lobbying group, has filed a third lawsuit against the fee and is appealing a judge’s decision that rejected its claims that Trump had no authority to impose it.