A Federal Court Vacated the $100,000 H-1B Fee Policies on September 30, 2026: What the Ruling Changes for Texas Employers and H-1B Workers

What Changed, and When

On September 19, 2025 the President issued Proclamation 10973, which restricted the entry of certain specialty-occupation nonimmigrant workers unless a $100,000 payment was made. Five agency documents then told employers and consular officers how that was to work. The order of September 30, 2026 describes them collectively as the “Agency Policies”: a USCIS memorandum and a Customs and Border Protection memorandum, both dated September 20, 2025; a USCIS frequently asked questions page and a Department of State frequently asked questions page, both dated September 21, 2025; and a USCIS H-1B update dated October 20, 2025 that set out payment procedures and national-interest exception criteria. In the court’s own summary, those materials amounted to “a one-time payment of $100,000 that is required ‘on submission’ of any ‘new’ H-1B petition filed on or after September 21, 2025.”

On September 18, 2026 the President issued Proclamation 11069, 91 Fed. Reg. 60,497, extending Proclamation 10973 for another 12 months.

Then came the order. In Global Nurse Force v. Trump, No. 4:25-cv-08454-HSG, United States District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. of the Northern District of California granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction on September 30, 2026, and ordered that:

• “The Agency Policies are VACATED and REMANDED to Agency Defendants.”
• “Agency Defendants, and all persons acting under their direction, are enjoined from enforcing or implementing the Agency Policies” made pursuant to or in implementation of Proclamation 10973 and its extension in Proclamation 11069.
• The government’s motion to dismiss was denied.
• Provisional class certification was denied without prejudice.

The legal ground was the Administrative Procedure Act. The court treated the five documents as legislative rules that had to go through notice-and-comment rulemaking and did not, and it found that the agencies “failed to consider any alternatives or the reliance interests.” The court also declined to stay its own order, writing that a stay “is not appropriate where… Plaintiffs have shown that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their APA claims.”

What the order did not do matters as much as what it did. The court vacated the guidance, not the proclamations. Proclamation 10973 and Proclamation 11069 were not enjoined, and the court did not rule on whether the President had the authority to impose the payment in the first place.

This is the fourth ruling in the same fight. A federal district court in Washington, D.C. upheld the payment in December 2025, and that decision is under appellate review. A federal court in Massachusetts vacated the same Agency Policies earlier in 2026 — the September 30 order notes that the policies are “thus currently vacated” — and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit denied the government’s request for a stay while its appeal proceeds. The California ruling is the first to reach the September 2026 extension.

There is also a rule in the pipeline. The order records that the Department of Homeland Security has proposed a rule requiring a $103,265 payment for certain H-1B petitions, published at 91 Fed. Reg. 54,817 (Aug. 25, 2026). A remand for notice-and-comment rulemaking and a pending proposed rule point in the same direction: the question is now less whether the guidance stands and more what a formal rule would say, and when.

Who in Texas This Reaches

Texas is one of the largest H-1B states in the country. An analysis of USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub figures counted roughly 45,000 initial and continuing H-1B approvals tied to Texas in fiscal year 2022, second among the states. That is the scale of the Texas population this litigation sits on top of.

• Health care employers and the clinicians they recruit. The named plaintiffs in this case come from nurse recruitment, which is the same channel Texas hospitals, nursing facilities and rural health systems use to fill specialty roles.
• Technology, engineering and energy employers in Austin, Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio, plus the smaller engineering and services firms that sponsor one or two workers at a time and feel a six-figure payment far more sharply than a large employer does.
• Universities, medical centers and research institutions across the state, which sponsor specialty-occupation workers on their own filing calendars.
• Workers who are already in Texas on another status and were weighing a change of status, and workers outside the United States waiting on consular processing, because the proclamations are written as restrictions on entry and the two situations are not the same.
• Families. An H-1B worker is often the status anchor for a spouse and children, so an employer’s filing decision reaches a household and not only a job.
• Employers who already paid. Petitions filed while the guidance was in force raise their own questions, and those questions are about specific receipts and specific dates.

What This Changes Legally

A vacatur and a remand are not the end of a policy. Vacating the Agency Policies removes the guidance that told employers to pay; remanding sends the matter back to the agencies, which remain free to pursue the same objective through the rulemaking the court said was required. The proposed $103,265 rule is the visible form of that path.

A preliminary injunction is a preliminary step. The order came on a motion for a preliminary injunction, the motion to dismiss was denied rather than granted, and the case continues. Appellate review of this order is available to the government, and appeals in the related cases are already live in more than one circuit.

Two courts have vacated the guidance and one upheld the payment. That split is why the same question has had different answers in different months, and why the date a petition was or will be filed is a legally meaningful fact rather than a detail.

The proclamations are still on the books. Proclamation 11069 extends the restriction by its own terms into 2027, and the September 30 order expressly left the proclamations untouched. Guidance and proclamation are two different legal instruments, and a ruling about one is not a ruling about the other.

Nothing here predicts an outcome for any petition. What a given employer owes, what a consular officer will do at a given post, and what happens to a petition already in process all turn on records that have to be read one case at a time.

This page reports the facts and takes no position on the proclamations, the payment, the rulemaking, the litigation, any agency, any official, any party or any candidate.

What Kind of Option Might Apply

Nothing on this page is legal advice, and nothing here says that any particular employer or worker owes any particular payment or is or is not eligible for anything. What an experienced Texas immigration attorney can review includes:

• What the current requirement is for a petition going out this week, checked against the agencies’ own published instructions on the day it is filed rather than against a news headline.
• Whether a filing already in process is affected, and what its filing date and receipt notice mean now that the guidance behind the payment has been vacated.
• What a payment already made may mean for a specific petition, and what records an employer should be keeping about it.
• Whether a change of status inside the United States and a consular entry raise different questions on one worker’s facts, given that the proclamations are framed as entry restrictions.
• How the proposed DHS rule could affect a hiring plan that runs into the next cap season, and what the comment and effective-date mechanics of a rule look like.
• Whether another status or category fits the same role and the same person, which is a question worth asking any time the cost or the posture of one route changes.
• What a pending appeal could mean for a decision that cannot wait, and how employers in similar positions are documenting the choice they make.

Many employers and workers who read a headline about a six-figure payment find their own exposure is narrower than it first appeared once a lawyer walks the filing with them, and options often exist that are not obvious from the coverage. Talking to a lawyer early is how you learn which situation you are actually in.

Why Acting Quickly Can Matter

H-1B work runs on dates that do not move: a status expiration, an extension window, an onboarding date, a cap-season filing period. This requirement has changed direction four times in roughly a year, it is on appeal, and a proposed rule is pending, so the legal picture that applies to a petition is the picture on the day it is filed. Two employers making the same decision three weeks apart can be in different legal positions.

It is best to talk to a lawyer while a filing decision is still open rather than after a petition has gone out, because a question that takes one conversation now can take a refiling, a lost start date or a gap in someone’s work authorization later.

Sources

1. United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Order in Global Nurse Force, et al. v. Donald J. Trump, et al., No. 4:25-cv-08454-HSG (Sept. 30, 2026), Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. — the definition of the Agency Policies, the vacatur and remand, the injunction reaching Proclamation 10973 and its extension in Proclamation 11069, the denial of the motion to dismiss, the denial of provisional class certification, the APA reasoning and the denial of a stay (primary source).
2. The President, Proclamation 11069, “Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers” (Sept. 18, 2026), 91 Fed. Reg. 60,497 — the 12-month extension of Proclamation 10973 (primary source).
3. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Fee for Certain H-1B Petitions,” proposed rule, 91 Fed. Reg. 54,817 (Aug. 25, 2026) — the proposed $103,265 payment (primary source).
4. “Judge Strikes Down Latest Version Of $100,000 H-1B Immigration Fee”, Forbes, October 1, 2026 — independent account of the September 30 ruling, the judge, and the court’s reasoning.
5. “While Government’s Appeal Proceeds, $100,000 H-1B Fee is on Hold”, The National Law Review — the Massachusetts vacatur, the First Circuit stay denial and the appellate posture preceding this order.
6. “U.S. Court Vacates H-1B $100,000 Fee Policy Pending Rulemaking” — second independent account of the vacatur and the remand for rulemaking.
7. “Useful Stats: A look at the H-1B visa program by industry, employer and state”, SSTI — the Texas approval figure drawn from the USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub.
8. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, H-1B Specialty Occupations — the agency page carrying current program instructions.