A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s policy of imposing a $100,000 fee on new H1-B visa applications — a move that would have upended hiring at tech companies, hospitals, and rural school districts across the country.
Judge Leo Sorokin ruled on Monday that the fee violated both the federal Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution. In his written decision, Sorokin found that the administration failed to explain the rationale behind the fee and characterized it as an unconstitutional tax imposed without congressional authorization.
Alaska’s Schools Were Hit Hardest
While Silicon Valley would have felt the pinch, the fee’s most dramatic impact was on rural Alaska school districts that depend on H1-B visa teachers to fill severe staffing gaps. According to Lisa Parady, director of the Alaska Council of School Administrators, 341 of the 573 international teachers in Alaska work on H1-B visas. In some rural districts, visa holders make up 50 to 80 percent of total teaching staff.
School districts already spend $6,000 to $12,000 per teacher on recruitment and sponsorship. Tacking on a $100,000 federal fee made continued hiring financially impossible for many districts. The Alaska Legislature passed a unanimous resolution in May urging a teacher exemption. Both of Alaska’s US Senators — Republican Dan Sullivan and Republican Lisa Murkowski — wrote to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem requesting relief.
The Bigger Picture for Tech
The ruling matters well beyond Alaska classrooms. The H1-B program is the primary pipeline for skilled foreign workers in STEM, healthcare, and engineering. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon collectively sponsor tens of thousands of H1-B visas annually. A $100,000 per-visa surcharge would have dramatically rewritten the economics of international hiring — potentially pushing more roles overseas as companies reconsider the cost of US-based talent.
The fee represented a roughly 5,000 percent increase over previous costs in some cases, according to Murkowski, who has introduced legislation (S.4087) to permanently exempt public school employees from non-processing H1-B fees.
What Happens Next
Murkowski said she’s working to eliminate the fee permanently regardless of future legal challenges. But the administration could appeal, meaning the $100K fee might not be dead — just delayed.
For now, tech companies and schools can continue hiring through the existing H1-B framework. But the threat hanging over the program for months has already had a chilling effect on applications, and the legal uncertainty isn’t going away overnight.
