President Trump didn’t exceed his authority by imposing a $100,000 charge on new H-1B workers hired from outside the US, a federal judge in Washington found in a significant win for the administration’s claims to nearly unfettered authority to restrict entry to the US.
Trump added the fee via a Sept. 19 proclamation that shocked businesses and left many employers unable to bring in foreign talent for key roles. The US Chamber of Commerce argued to the US District Court for the District of Columbia that the fee violated a federal immigration statute and exceeded the president’s authority.
Judge Beryl A. Howell found that the Trump administration had satisfied conditions for invoking authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act empowering the president to restrict entry to the US. In her order Tuesday, she denied a request from the Chamber and Association of American Universities to enjoin the fee and granted a motion for summary judgment from the Trump administration.
“The lawfulness of the Proclamation and its implementation rests on a straightforward reading of congressional statutes giving the President broad authority to regulate entry into the United States for immigrants and nonimmigrants alike,” Howell wrote in an opinion Tuesday.
The Chamber lawsuit was one of several legal challenges filed in response to the $100,000 fee. A coalition of states led by California and Massachusetts brought the latest suit aiming to block the charge.
The Immigration and Nationality Act allows the executive branch only to charge fees offsetting the cost of administering visa programs, the Chamber said in its case. And new charges should go through public notice-and-comment rulemaking, it added.
The fee proclamation was issued with so little warning that federal immigration agencies were largely left to fill in the details in subsequent weeks. The Department of Homeland Security later clarified that only new petitions for H-1B workers—not current employees—would be affected and that the fee wouldn’t apply to foreign students approved for H-1B status within the US.
The Chamber is represented by the US Chamber Litigation Center and McDermott Will & Schulte. The government is represented by the Department of Justice.
The case is US Chamber of Commerce v. DHS, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-03675, order issued 12/23/25.
(Updated with additional reporting. )
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