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An Obama-appointed federal judge who previously blocked President Donald Trump’s birthright executive order has faced a major backlash from the administration for violating Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa requirement and calling the policy illegal.
US District Judge Leo Sorokin of Massachusetts ruled Monday that the Trump administration does not have the authority to impose a higher payment on employers seeking new H-1B visas, finding that the requirement amounts to a tax that only Congress has the power to impose.
In Monday’s 42-page decision, Sorokin sided with a coalition of 20 states that challenged Trump’s September 2025 announcement to create a new $100,000 minimum wage requirement for employers applying for foreign workers under the H-1B visa program, which allows American employers to hire skilled foreign workers. About 65,000 foreign workers are granted H-1B visas each year.
TRUMP’S $100K H-1B VISA COULD HIT TECH GIANTS LIKE AMAZON AND MICROSOFT HARDEST
US President Donald Trump during the signing of the executive order in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, Wednesday, June 3, 2026. (Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Before Trump’s announcement, employers typically paid between $2,000 and $5,000 to sponsor an H-1B worker, depending on the type of application and the size of the company.
The administration stated that this step is necessary to prevent abuse of the visa system and to protect American workers.
Trump’s announcement said the H-1B program was exploited to replace American workers with low-wage jobs in other countries and that the new payment would help address those problems.
Sorokin rejected the administration’s legal justification, finding that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives presidents broad authority over the entry of non-citizens but does not authorize them to impose taxes.
“While the Executive has broad discretion regarding immigration admissions and deportations, … that discretion is not unlimited,” Sorokin wrote, referring to previous case law.
Sorokin concluded that the payment served as a tax rather than a permitted limit on immigration.
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“The court finds that the Policy imposes a tax on H-1B petitions without the necessary congressional mandate,” Sorokin wrote.
He also dismissed the administration’s argument that the payment requirement is just another restriction on immigration, saying bluntly: “Taxes are not ‘restrictions.'”
Aside from the constitutional concerns, Sorokin also found that the federal agencies violated the Administrative Procedure Act by implementing the policy without notice and comment and concluded that the agencies exceeded their statutory authority.
As a remedy, Sorokin declared the policy illegal and abandoned it altogether.
Signs for the US State Department are displayed outside its headquarters in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, DC, on April 15, 2025. (Jim Watson/AFP)
Sorokin, who graduated from Yale and Columbia Law School, was appointed 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 executive order blocking Trump’s executive order seeking to limit the right to birthright citizenship. He ruled that the policy may be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. That dispute has reached the Supreme Court, and a decision is expected in the coming weeks.
The administration is expected to challenge Sorokin’s decision, setting off another legal battle over the scope of the president’s immigration authority and the limits of executive power.
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“President Trump has clear legal authority to restrict the entry of any group of aliens he determines is not in the best interest of America, and that is exactly what he has done,” 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 has already upheld a similar order, and the Administration hopes the order will be overturned on appeal.”
In a separate challenge filed in December 2025, US District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington refused to block the policy after dismissing claims by the US Chamber of Commerce that the H-1B surcharge violated federal immigration law.
