This is not immigration or legal advice, and Growx Tech IT does not provide either. What follows is a summary of what has actually happened in federal court and in the federal register over the past few months, drawn from the immigration attorneys and outlets tracking the case, so you can separate what's currently enforceable from what's still pending if this affects your job search or your employer's hiring plans.

What's actually enforceable right now

As of this week, the $100,000 H-1B fee cannot be charged. USCIS and the State Department are barred by a federal court order from assessing or collecting it on new H-1B petitions. That's true even though the underlying proclamation that created the fee was just renewed. The short version: the policy framework got extended, but the fee inside it is still under an active court block and has been since early summer.

How the fee ended up blocked

The $100,000 fee was created by a presidential proclamation signed September 19, 2025, and it applied to new H-1B petitions only, not renewals or extensions for people already in H-1B status. Twenty states sued, arguing the administration had overstepped its authority. On June 9, 2026, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston agreed, ruling that the policy "imposes a tax on H-1B petitions without the requisite delegation by Congress" and violates the Administrative Procedure Act, the law governing how federal agencies can create rules. That decision vacated the fee. The administration sought an emergency stay to keep collecting the fee while it appealed; on July 24, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit denied that request, leaving the district court's block in place. It's worth noting a separate, earlier lawsuit over the same fee had gone the other way, with a different judge ruling it fell within presidential authority. That case is now on appeal at the D.C. Circuit, so two conflicting rulings are still working through two different appeals courts at the same time.

The September 18 extension — and why it isn't the same thing

The original proclamation was written to run for 12 months, which put its hard expiration at September 20, 2026. On September 18, 2026, the administration extended it, continuing the same framework through September 2027 rather than letting it lapse. That extension is about keeping the legal vehicle for the fee alive long-term, not about restoring the fee's enforceability today. The district court's order and the First Circuit's refusal to pause it are still controlling: the fee "remains blocked by the courts, so it still can't be enforced," in the words of one law firm tracking the case, even with the proclamation itself now renewed through next year.

Myth to retire: "extended through 2027" does not mean the fee is back in effect. A proclamation being renewed and a fee being legally collectible are two different things. Right now, employers should not pay the $100,000 fee when filing H-1B petitions, because the court order prevents USCIS from collecting it regardless of what the proclamation says on paper. Adjudication practices have also been inconsistent even for non-fee cases, so filing strategy is worth assessing case by case with counsel rather than assuming any one rule applies uniformly.

Littler and DiRaimondo & Schroeder LLP case tracking, September 2026

A second, separate H-1B fee proposal is also still in play

Confusingly, the $100,000 proclamation fee isn't the only new H-1B cost working its way through the federal process. In late August 2026, the Department of Homeland Security published a formal Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for a related but legally distinct $103,265 fee on certain cap-subject H-1B petitions, filed under a separate regulatory docket. That proposal's public comment period runs through September 24, 2026. Because it moves through ordinary rulemaking rather than a presidential proclamation, it isn't automatically affected by the court rulings above, and legal trackers have flagged the real possibility of both a proclamation-based fee and a rulemaking-based fee becoming enforceable at different points, which would compound rather than replace one another. As of publication, neither is currently being charged, but they are on different legal tracks and could resolve on different timelines.

What this means if you're job searching under H-1B or OPT status right now

A few things are genuinely useful to know, separate from speculation about how any of this ultimately resolves:

  • The fee is not currently being charged. If an employer or a recruiter tells you a new H-1B petition requires a $100,000 payment right now, that's not accurate as of this week — the court order blocks it.
  • This can still change with little notice. The administration could petition the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency stay, the First Circuit could eventually rule on the merits, or a revised proclamation "designed to survive litigation," as one immigration firm put it, could appear at any time.
  • Talk to a licensed immigration attorney about your specific situation rather than relying on general market-facts coverage like this post, which cannot tell you how any of this applies to your particular petition, employer, or timeline.
  • Ask employers directly about sponsorship plans and timing if you're evaluating offers. Some companies may move filings forward while the fee is blocked; others may wait for more certainty.

Why two fee tracks and two court cases at once is confusing by design

Part of what makes this hard to follow is that "the H-1B fee" is really shorthand for at least three separate moving pieces: the original proclamation-based $100,000 fee (blocked in the First Circuit, now extended through 2027 on paper), a second lawsuit over that same fee that reached the opposite conclusion and is on appeal at the D.C. Circuit, and the entirely separate $103,265 rulemaking proposal with its own comment period and legal process. Each of these can move independently. A ruling in one case doesn't automatically resolve the others, and a headline about any single piece of this can easily read as more final than it actually is. If you're trying to track this yourself, the most reliable approach is to check primary sources directly, USCIS's official H-1B guidance page and the federal docket for the pending rule, rather than relying on any single article, including this one, as the last word.

The bottom line

The $100,000 H-1B fee is currently blocked by two federal court rulings, even after the proclamation that created it was extended through September 2027. A second, unrelated $103,265 fee proposal is separately working through the rulemaking process with a comment period closing September 24, 2026. Both are worth watching, and neither is enforceable today. If you're job searching in a metro with a large international tech workforce — markets like the Bay Area or New York routinely have some of the highest concentrations of H-1B and OPT candidates in the country — that competition for roles is real regardless of fee status, and it's worth having a resume and interview presence that holds up on its own. That's what our Silicon Valley and New York City candidates work on with us, and it applies everywhere else too. See our services for the full breakdown, and pricing for what's included.