A Second Federal Court Blocked the $100K H-1B Fee. Here Is Why You Still Cannot Relax.

What happened on September 30

On September 30, 2026, U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. of the Northern District of California issued a preliminary injunction blocking DHS and the State Department from enforcing a $100,000 fee on certain H-1B petitions. The case is Global Nurse Force, et al. v. Donald J. Trump, et al., brought by a coalition of healthcare, educational, and religious organizations.

The injunction holds until DHS completes proper notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act and conducts the small-business impact analysis the Regulatory Flexibility Act requires. The court found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that DHS's implementation guidance was arbitrary and capricious. A case management conference is scheduled for October 27; a joint case management statement is due October 20.

For employers filing H-1B petitions today: USCIS is not collecting a $100,000 fee. Do not include it in your filing package. If any advisory or immigration tool is telling you to include it, that advisory is wrong.

The full history — because this keeps getting confused

This is the second time a federal district court has blocked this fee, but the California ruling and the earlier Massachusetts ruling are separate lawsuits in separate circuits with different plaintiffs and different underlying legal theories. They happened to reach the same result, but for distinct reasons.

September 2025: Trump signed Proclamation 10973 imposing a $100,000 fee on H-1B petitions where the beneficiary was outside the United States and needed consular processing. December 2025: a coalition of state attorneys general sued in Massachusetts. June 8, 2026: District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston vacated the proclamation, holding it exceeded presidential authority and functioned as a tax only Congress can impose. The First Circuit issued a brief administrative stay, temporarily reinstating the fee. July 24, 2026: the First Circuit denied the full stay motion. The fee has been unenforceable since.

Then in September 2026, the administration extended Proclamation 10973 through September 21, 2027, and issued new DHS implementation guidance directing USCIS to resume collecting the fee under the extended proclamation. Global Nurse Force and its co-plaintiffs sued in the Northern District of California to block this new enforcement attempt. On September 30, Judge Gilliam granted the preliminary injunction.

There are now two separate district court injunctions, in two circuits, blocking this fee. The Massachusetts case is still on appeal at the First Circuit on the merits. The California case is at the district court level with the October 27 conference ahead. These are not the same proceeding.

What the California court actually found

Judge Gilliam's ruling rests on two failures by DHS. First, the agency issued implementation guidance directing USCIS to collect the $100,000 fee without going through the APA notice-and-comment process that binding rules require. An agency cannot impose significant financial obligations on regulated parties through guidance alone when those obligations should go through formal rulemaking. The court found this guidance was arbitrary and capricious.

Second, DHS failed to conduct the Regulatory Flexibility Act analysis required when a rule has significant economic impact on small businesses. A $100,000 per-petition fee obviously has significant economic impact on small employers who sponsor H-1B workers. DHS did not assess it before issuing the guidance.

The standard for a preliminary injunction is whether the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits — the court found they were, on both grounds. The injunction stays in place while DHS either completes the rulemaking it skipped or the litigation reaches a final resolution.

The part this ruling does not touch

Here is what actually matters for the next six months. The California injunction blocks the proclamation-based implementation of the $100,000 fee. It does not affect the $103,265 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that DHS published August 25, 2026, in the Federal Register under Docket USCIS-2026-0298.

The $103,265 NPRM is going through a different process — the one Judge Gilliam said DHS should have used in the first place. Published as a proper proposed rule with a public comment period that closed September 24, DHS is now reviewing comments and working toward a final rule. The NPRM's scope is also broader than what the proclamation covered. The proclamation applied only to workers outside the United States seeking consular processing. The proposed rule applies to all cap-subject H-1B petitions, including change-of-status filings for workers already inside the country who have never held H-1B status.

If the $103,265 rule finalizes, the total cost of a cap-subject H-1B petition would exceed $110,000 when stacked on existing fees. The FY2028 H-1B cap registration window typically opens in March 2027. That is the filing deadline to watch — not the outcome of this week's injunction.

The California court's injunction makes the fee unenforceable right now. It does not make the proposed $103,265 fee go away. Those are two different things.

Cap-exempt versus cap-subject: who faces what

Both the blocked proclamation-based fee and the proposed $103,265 NPRM target cap-subject petitions — filings that go through the annual H-1B lottery. Universities, nonprofit research institutions, and government research organizations file cap-exempt H-1B petitions. The proposed rule does not apply to them.

Extensions, amendments, and transfers for workers already in H-1B status are also cap-exempt. A worker currently in H-1B status seeking an extension with their current employer, or transferring to a new employer under AC21 portability, is on a cap-exempt filing. The proposed fee does not apply to those either.

This is also separate from the 9-11 biometric entry-exit fee that took effect September 9, 2026, which applies to H-1B and L-1 petitions from covered employers — those with 50 or more U.S. employees where more than 50 percent are in H-1B or L-1 status. That fee is $150 per petition and is already in effect. It has nothing to do with the blocked $100,000 fee or the proposed $103,265 fee.

What belongs in a filing package right now

For any H-1B filing submitted in October 2026, the current fee schedule consists of: the base I-129 filing fee, the asylum program surcharge, the fraud prevention and detection fee, the ACWIA training fee, and the 9-11 biometric entry-exit fee for covered employers. That is the complete list of fees owed today.

Do not include a $100,000 payment. Do not include a $103,265 payment. Neither is currently enforceable. Including either creates rather than resolves problems, and there is no active pay.gov mechanism for voluntarily remitting a blocked fee.

The H-1B layoff executive order signed September 18 is active and unaffected by any of the fee litigation. If your employer conducted workforce reductions in the past 12 months in occupational categories comparable to the role being requested, documentation of the distinction between affected roles and the H-1B role belongs in the filing package now — not in response to an RFE later. The DOL audit window under that order is already running.

Two tracks running at the same time

The administration is not going to accept two district court losses and drop the $100,000 fee idea entirely. Two tracks are running simultaneously, and they can both move forward regardless of what either court does in the short term.

Track one is the courts. The First Circuit has not yet issued a merits ruling in the Massachusetts case. An adverse ruling in the First Circuit adds a third setback for the administration. A favorable ruling creates a direct circuit conflict with California and raises the odds of Supreme Court review. The California case has its October 27 conference and will develop on its own schedule. Whether the administration asks the Ninth Circuit for a stay of the district court's injunction is the immediate next question there.

Track two is the $103,265 NPRM. This is the more durable path. A properly promulgated final rule addresses the procedural objection that has now sunk the fee twice. Merits challenges to a final rule — whether the fee is authorized by statute, whether the amount is supported by the administrative record, whether the economic analysis was adequate — are harder to win than procedural APA objections. If a final rule publishes before the FY2028 cap registration window opens in March 2027, it applies. Monitor the Federal Register in early 2027, not immigration forum headlines. This article is informational only and does not constitute legal advice. The H-1B fee and court order status described is based on publicly available information as of October 5, 2026. Consult a licensed immigration attorney before making filing decisions.