Obama-appointed judge who blocked Trump birthright citizenship order strikes again, throws out visa overhaul

An Obama-appointed federal judge who previously blocked President Donald Trump's birthright citizenship executive order has again dealt a major setback to the administration by striking down Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa payment requirement and declaring the policy unlawful.

U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin of Massachusetts ruled Monday that the Trump administration lacked the authority to impose the hefty payment on employers seeking new H-1B visas, finding that the requirement amounted to a tax that only Congress has the constitutional power to impose.

In Monday's 42-page decision, Sorokin sided with a coalition of 20 states that challenged Trump's September 2025 proclamation creating a new $100,000 payment requirement for employers filing petitions for foreign workers under the H-1B visa program, which allows U.S. employers to hire skilled foreign workers. Approximately 65,000 foreign workers are issued a H-1B visa each year.

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Before Trump's proclamation, employers typically paid between $2,000 and $5,000 in filing fees to sponsor an H-1B worker, depending on the type of application and the size of the company.

The administration had argued that the measure was necessary to curb abuse of the visa system and protect American workers.

Trump's proclamation stated that the H-1B program had been exploited to replace U.S. workers with lower-paid foreign labor and that the new payment would help address those concerns.

Sorokin rejected the administration's legal justification, finding that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives presidents broad authority over the entry of noncitizens but does not authorize them to impose taxes.

"While the Executive has broad discretion over the admission and exclusion of aliens, ... that discretion is not boundless," Sorokin wrote, referring to previous case law.

Sorokin concluded that the payment functioned as a tax rather than a permissible immigration restriction.

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"The Court finds that the Policy imposes a tax on H-1B petitions without the requisite delegation by Congress," Sorokin wrote.

He further rejected the administration's argument that the payment requirement was simply another immigration restriction, bluntly stating: "Taxes are not 'restrictions.'"

Beyond the constitutional concerns, Sorokin also found that federal agencies violated the Administrative Procedure Act by implementing the policy without notice-and-comment rule making and concluded that the agencies exceeded their statutory authority.

As a remedy, Sorokin declared the policy unlawful and vacated it in its entirety.

Sorokin, a Yale and Columbia Law School graduate, was nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama in 2013 and confirmed by the Senate in 2014. Last year, Sorokin was the fourth judge to issue a nationwide injunction blocking Trump's executive order seeking to limit birthright citizenship. He ruled that the policy is likely unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. That dispute has since reached the Supreme Court, and a ruling is expected in the coming weeks.

The administration is expected to appeal Sorokin's decision, setting up another legal battle over the scope of presidential authority in immigration matters and the limits of executive power.

"President Trump has clear legal authority to restrict entry of any class of aliens he determines is not in America’s best interests, and that is exactly what he did," White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Fox News Digital. "The H-1B program has been abused for decades, and President Trump finally took action to fix it. A federal judge in Washington already upheld a nearly identical order, and the Administration is confident this order will be reversed on appeal."

In a separate challenge filed in December 2025, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington declined to block the policy after dismissing claims from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the additional H-1B charge violated federal immigration law.