Trump's $100K H-1B Fee Is Dead in Court and Expiring by Proclamation — What Happens Next?
A federal court vacated the $100,000 H-1B fee as an unauthorized tax, an appeals court declined to reinstate it, and the underlying proclamation's own expiry date has now passed.
A policy that threatened to reshape US tech and outsourcing hiring — a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa petitions — has spent 2026 losing in court, one ruling at a time, and its own stated expiry date has now quietly passed.
The fee, and the court that killed it
Presidential Proclamation 10973 imposed a $100,000 fee on H-1B petitions. On June 8, 2026, a federal district court in Massachusetts vacated the proclamation entirely, ruling it was an unauthorized tax under the Administrative Procedure Act — meaning the executive branch had exceeded its legal authority in imposing what amounted to a new tax without the underlying statutory power to do so.
The appeal that didn't save it
The government appealed. On July 24, 2026, the First Circuit declined to reinstate the fee while that appeal proceeds — meaning the fee has stayed dead in practice throughout the appellate process, not just at the district court level.
The detail almost nobody is tracking: it expires anyway
Separate from the litigation, the Proclamation carried its own built-in expiry date: September 20, 2026 — a date that has now passed. Unless the administration took affirmative steps to extend it (and no confirmed extension has been reported), the underlying authority the fee relied on has lapsed on its own terms, independent of whatever the appeals court eventually decides.
Why this leaves genuine uncertainty, not resolution
That combination — vacated by a court, appeal pending but stayed, and the source authority expired by its own terms — doesn't add up to a clean resolution. It means employers currently face real uncertainty about whether any successor fee or authority will replace the $100,000 charge, through a new proclamation, legislative action, or a different legal mechanism entirely. The litigation isn't over; it's paused in a posture that happens to favour employers for now.
Why Indian IT and outsourcing firms specifically should be tracking this closely
India's IT services and outsourcing industry is the largest user base of H-1B visas by a wide margin — meaning this isn't a peripheral US immigration story for Indian business readers, it's a direct cost-and-risk variable for the sector's largest employers. Until the appeal resolves or Congress acts, budgeting for H-1B-dependent hiring pipelines should account for genuine binary uncertainty: either the current fee-free status holds, or a new mechanism reintroduces a comparable cost with limited advance notice.
Sources: NPR · Littler · Salinas Law