(DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS) – U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin blocked President Donald Trump’s $100,000 supplementary fee for new H-1B visas on June 8, 2026, ruling that the administration had imposed an unauthorized tax without congressional approval.

Sorokin, sitting in the District of Massachusetts, struck down the policy in California et al. v. Trump, Case No. 1:26-cv-11581. He found that the charge violated the Administrative Procedure Act and could not stand because the Constitution reserves taxing power to Congress.

The ruling halts one of the administration’s highest-cost immigration measures. Employers seeking new H-1B workers had been required to pay the $100,000 surcharge on top of standard filing fees, which typically ranged from $2,000 to $5,000.

Trump created the fee through Presidential Proclamation 10973, titled “Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers,” signed on September 19, 2025 and implemented on September 21, 2025. The proclamation added the extra charge to new H-1B petitions, sharply increasing the cost of hiring foreign workers in specialty occupations.

Sorokin’s decision turned on the distinction between a regulatory fee and a tax. The court concluded that the payment raised revenue rather than simply covering an agency service, placing it outside executive authority unless Congress had approved it.

The case was brought by 20 Democratic state attorneys general, who argued that the surcharge damaged hiring in healthcare, education and technology. Their lawsuit said the administration had erected a financial barrier that state institutions, hospitals, universities and private employers could not easily absorb.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin had defended the policy days earlier in testimony before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on June 2, 2026. He said, “We had 286,000 applicants a year to date for the H-1B visas; out of those, over 200,000 of them paid $100,000 to be able to come in because it allows us to process them in a little bit faster of a manner.”

Mullin’s account presented the fee as tied to faster processing. The administration said employers paying the charge could secure 15-day turnaround rather than a standard 7.5-month wait.

That testimony sits uneasily beside the government’s own court filings from March 2026. Those filings said only 85 payments had been processed as of February 15, 2026, and described a “chilling effect” on applications.

The gap between 85 payments and Mullin’s statement that over 200,000 applicants had paid the $100,000 fee is likely to draw attention as the case moves forward. The two accounts point to sharply different pictures of how widely the policy was used and how quickly it took hold.

Mullin also addressed compliance with adverse court rulings during the June 2, 2026 hearing. Asked whether he would obey court orders that ruled against the department, he said, “If we didn’t think courts were politicized, then I would probably be able to answer that.”

The Massachusetts ruling cuts into the administration’s “Hire American” agenda, which sought to discourage foreign hiring by making it far more expensive. Removing the surcharge restores the traditional H-1B cost structure, at least unless the administration wins a stay or adopts a new approach through Congress or fresh rulemaking.

Employers that rely on H-1B workers now no longer face a mandatory $100,000 surcharge for each new hire. That change affects sectors already named in the litigation, including technology companies, school systems and rural hospitals that said the fee pushed recruiting costs far beyond standard levels.

Foreign professionals also stand to benefit because sponsorship returns to the earlier fee structure. Workers from India and China were among those who had been priced out after the supplementary charge took effect.

Refund questions now sit over the case. More than 200,000 applicants who paid under Mullin’s account may seek their money back, though the Department of Homeland Security had not issued guidance by June 8, 2026 on whether vacating the policy will apply retroactively.

The dispute also reaches beyond immigration policy into separation of powers. Sorokin’s ruling treated the fee not as an administrative adjustment but as a tax, and that framing places the case in a constitutional fight over how far a president can go in raising money without lawmakers.

The administration’s options from here include an appeal and a request to preserve the charge while litigation continues. Any further move will matter to employers that budgeted for the surcharge, workers whose petitions were delayed or dropped, and state governments that argued the policy weakened their ability to staff public services.

USCIS had not posted a ruling-specific notice in its newsroom by the time of the decision, but the agency’s newsroom is the place to watch for any policy alert or statement on the vacatur. The Department of Homeland Security’s news page remains the clearest place to track any response from Mullin or the department, while the Federal Register entry for Presidential Proclamation 10973 shows the order that launched the fee now struck down in court.