A Second Federal Court Blocks the Renewed $100,000 H-1B Fee: What the Global Nurse Force Ruling Does and Does Not Decide

On September 30, 2026, U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. of the Northern District of California issued a preliminary injunction in Global Nurse Force v. Trump, vacating the agency guidance that implements the $100,000 H-1B entry fee and barring DHS, USCIS, and the State Department from enforcing it. It is the second time in four months a federal court has blocked this fee — but this ruling rests on different legal ground than the first one, and it reaches the fee's September 2026 renewal in a way the earlier case never addressed.

What we know from the order

• Case: Global Nurse Force, et al. v. Trump, et al., No. 4:25-cv-08454 (N.D. Cal.)
• Judge: Haywood S. Gilliam Jr., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Oakland)
• Order: Preliminary injunction, granted in part and denied in part
• Issued: September 30, 2026
• Plaintiffs: Global Nurse Force and co-plaintiffs including nurses, medical residents and fellows, labor unions (including UAW and SEIU-affiliated groups), the American Association of University Professors, religious organizations that sponsor clergy on H-1B status, and individual H-1B workers and employers
• Defendants: President Trump, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the agencies implementing the fee
• What is vacated: the "Agency Policies" — the CBP/USCIS/State guidance, memoranda, and FAQs that actually impose and collect the $100,000 payment — remanded to the agencies
• What is enjoined: agency enforcement or implementation of those policies "made pursuant to or in implementation of Proclamation No. 10973 and its extension in Proclamation No. 11069" (the September 18, 2026 renewal)
• What the court did not decide: whether the proclamations themselves are a lawful exercise of presidential authority — that question remains open
• Also decided: the court denied the plaintiffs' motion for class certification and denied the government's motion to dismiss, so the underlying case continues

There is no question here that Agency Defendants failed to consider any alternatives or the reliance interests of the regulated parties. As such, Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim that the Agency Policies are arbitrary and capricious.Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr., order in Global Nurse Force v. Trump, September 30, 2026

The Agency Policies accordingly are most accurately characterized as legislative rules subject to notice-and-comment rulemaking.Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr., order in Global Nurse Force v. Trump, September 30, 2026

How this differs from the June ruling

This is not a repeat of the case we covered in August (see our earlier article). That earlier ruling, from Judge Leo Sorokin in the District of Massachusetts on June 8, 2026, held that the $100,000 payment functioned as an unconstitutional tax that only Congress — not the President — can impose, and vacated the original implementing policy "in its entirety." The First Circuit declined to stay that ruling on July 24, 2026. Gilliam's order reaches the same practical outcome — the fee cannot currently be enforced — but gets there on narrower, procedural grounds: that the agencies wrote binding "legislative rules" without going through notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act, and did so in an arbitrary-and-capricious way by ignoring reasonable alternatives and the reliance interests of employers, universities, hospitals, and religious organizations that sponsor H-1B workers. Gilliam's order does not reach, and does not need to decide, the tax-power question that drove the Massachusetts case.

Why it matters that this order names Proclamation 11069

Proclamation 11069 is the renewal President Trump signed September 18, 2026, extending the fee requirement through September 21, 2027 (see our earlier article). Because the Massachusetts case and the First Circuit's stay denial both predate that renewal, neither one has ever directly addressed whether the renewed proclamation's implementing guidance is lawful. Gilliam's order is the first ruling to reach the renewal specifically, enjoining agency enforcement of policies issued "pursuant to or in implementation of" both the original Proclamation 10973 and its extension in Proclamation 11069. That closes a gap the earlier litigation had left open since September 18: whether a fresh proclamation, implemented through the same kind of agency guidance, could restart fee collection on its own. For now, it cannot.

What the ruling leaves unresolved

• The proclamations themselves — the presidential actions, as opposed to the agency guidance implementing them — were not enjoined, and the court did not rule on whether the President exceeded his statutory or constitutional authority in issuing them.
• The agencies remain free to pursue the fee through proper notice-and-comment rulemaking rather than informal guidance — which is effectively what DHS's separate $103,265 proposed rule (RIN pending, comment period opened August 25, 2026) is attempting on a parallel track (see our earlier article).
• The government's time to appeal this preliminary injunction to the Ninth Circuit had not run as of this writing, and the underlying case continues in the district court following the denial of the motion to dismiss.
• With two different district courts now blocking the fee on two different legal theories, plus a pending appeal in the First Circuit, immigration counsel increasingly describe this fight as one that is heading toward the Supreme Court rather than resolving at the circuit level.

What this means if you are an H-1B employer, petitioner, or OPT/STEM OPT worker planning a filing

• As of September 30, 2026, the $100,000 fee is unenforceable under two separate, currently operative federal court orders — do not budget for it on a petition you are filing now.
• That status can change quickly: either order could be stayed on appeal, and DHS's separate $103,265 rulemaking could still take effect if it survives its own comment period and any resulting litigation.
• Track this alongside, not instead of, the $103,265 proposed rule and the September 18 executive order on employer layoff scrutiny — these are three separate, independently moving tracks, and this ruling only resolves one of them, and only in part.
• OPT and STEM OPT holders timing an eventual H-1B petition should treat this as further confirmation that the fee question is genuinely unsettled, not as a signal that it is gone for good.

Bottom line

A second federal court has now blocked the $100,000 H-1B fee, this time squarely addressing the September 2026 renewal and doing so on administrative-procedure grounds rather than the tax-power theory that won in Massachusetts. The fee remains unenforceable today, but the ruling is a preliminary injunction in a case that continues, not a final resolution — and it deliberately leaves the proclamations' underlying legality for another day. We will update this article as the government decides whether to appeal and as DHS's separate rulemaking track moves forward.