The Justice Department filed a notice Thursday to appeal a federal court ruling that struck down President Donald Trump's $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications, according to CNBC.
A federal judge struck down the fee three days ago, ruling Trump exceeded his authority by imposing what amounted to an unauthorized tax
Andrew Harnik / Getty Images
The Justice Department filed a notice Thursday to appeal a federal court ruling that struck down President Donald Trump's $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications, according to CNBC.
Judge Leo Sorokin of the U.S. District Court in Boston had vacated the fee earlier in the week, concluding that congressional authorization was required before any such charge could be imposed — authority Trump did not have. "The substance and application of the $100,000 payment reveal that it is a tax," he wrote, finding that Congress had not delegated that power to the executive branch.
Trump imposed the fee by presidential proclamation last September, arguing the H-1B program had been misused to displace American workers. Before the proclamation, employers paid between $2,000 and $5,000 per application. The administration had contended that federal immigration law gave Trump authority to impose the charge as a penalty on certain foreign nationals — a position Judge Sorokin rejected.
Created in 1990, the H-1B program gives employers a path to bring on nonimmigrant workers in specialized roles, with authorization lasting as long as six years. It covers an estimated 700,000 people inside the U.S. and is used by major tech companies including Amazon $AMZN, Microsoft $MSFT, Meta $META, Apple $AAPL, and Alphabet $GOOGL. The fee had an immediate chilling effect on the program: court filings from March showed only 85 payments of the $100,000 charge had been processed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services through Feb. 15. Among those affected, Walmart $WMT was one of a number of companies that announced it was stepping back from the H-1B program once the proclamation went into force.
Judge Sorokin's ruling was one of multiple legal challenges to the fee. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a nurse recruiting firm have each brought independent lawsuits against the policy. The Chamber suffered a setback last December when a judge declined to halt the fee at the preliminary stage; that decision has since been appealed to a federal circuit court in Washington.
The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment, according to the outlet.
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