U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. on 30 September 2026 granted in part a preliminary injunction in Global Nurse Force et al. v. Donald J. Trump et al., No. 25-cv-08454-HSG (N.D. Cal.). Document 130 vacates and remands the “Agency Policies” that implemented a one-time $100,000 payment on new H-1B petitions, and enjoins the agency defendants from enforcing or implementing those policies under Proclamation 10973 and its extension in Proclamation 11069 until they complete notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act and regulatory flexibility analyses under the Regulatory Flexibility Act. This is not a holding that the proclamation is unconstitutional, and it is not the only court to have spoken.

The injunction stops the agencies from collecting the $100,000 payment under the policies the court vacated — it does not erase the presidential proclamation, and another district court has upheld the fee.
Citizen impact: Employers who file new H-1B petitions — the order names a small Detroit parts maker, a rural North Carolina kidney practice, a day school on the Lower Brule reservation, and language-immersion charter schools among the moving plaintiffs — are the households and payrolls inside this file. Nurses, teachers, and specialty workers outside the United States feel it as whether a petition can move without a $100,000 agency payment. The statutory H-1B cap (65,000 plus 20,000 advanced-degree visas) and Congress’s own fee schedule are unchanged. This is not an IRCC levels change and not the Big Bend barrier injunction.

What the order actually does

The Court defines the Agency Policies, in short, as a one-time payment of $100,000 required on submission of any new H-1B petition filed on or after 21 September 2025, as set out in USCIS and CBP memoranda, later FAQs, and an October 2025 USCIS update directing payment through Pay.gov. Defendants include the President, DHS and Secretary Markwayne Mullin, USCIS and Director Joseph B. Edlow, CBP and Commissioner Rodney Scott, and the State Department and Secretary Marco Rubio. The operative relief runs against the Agency Defendants and persons acting under their direction. The Court denied the government’s request to stay the injunction pending appeal.

On the merits of the preliminary-injunction motion, the Court found plaintiffs likely to succeed on claims that the Agency Policies are arbitrary and capricious — the agencies did not consider alternatives or the reliance interests of regulated parties — and that they were implemented without APA notice-and-comment and without the Regulatory Flexibility Act analysis. It denied the motion to dismiss and denied without prejudice a provisional class-certification motion, writing that class treatment was not required for the injunction it had entered. A case-management conference is set for 27 October 2026; a joint statement is due 20 October.

The split the order itself describes

Judge Gilliam’s opinion says the Court is not writing on a blank slate. In Chamber of Commerce v. United States Department of Homeland Security, the District of Columbia upheld the proclamation and the $100,000 fee, finding the President acted within the Immigration and Nationality Act and that the implementing policies did not violate the APA (815 F. Supp. 3d 73). That case is on appeal in the D.C. Circuit. In California v. Mullin, the District of Massachusetts declared unlawful and vacated DHS and State Department policies implementing the fee (833 F. Supp. 3d 50). The First Circuit denied a stay pending appeal (California v. Mullin, 183 F.4th 42). This order states that those agency policies “are thus currently vacated,” and later that “the Mullin court already vacated the Agency Policies such that the $100,000 fee is no longer in effect, and the First Circuit declined to stay the vacatur pending appeal.” Report the split. Do not collapse three dockets into one national final judgment.

What this piece refuses

Do not say the proclamation has been struck down. The relief vacates and enjoins agency implementation, not the President’s instrument as such. Do not say every H-1B filing in the country is permanently free of a six-figure payment — the injunction lasts until the agencies complete the procedures the order names, appeals are live, and the D.C. district court reached the opposite result. Do not adopt plaintiff-counsel lines that the President “cannot rewrite immigration policy with the stroke of a pen” as a holding; Judge Gilliam did not decide an unconstitutional-tax theory. Do not import a separate proposed DHS cap fee discussed in law-firm summaries; that figure is not in Document 130.

Contested: The government told the Court the H-1B program is open to abuse and that the payment protects U.S. workers and security. Plaintiffs say a $100,000 charge, imposed through memos rather than a rule, prices out nurses, teachers, and small employers Congress already charged under a statutory fee schedule. The verified ledger is the vacatur, the injunction’s conditions, and the contrary D.C. judgment.

Bottom line

Verified as of 4 October 2026: Doc. 130 (30 Sep) vacates the Agency Policies behind the $100,000 H-1B payment and bars the agencies from enforcing them under Proclamations 10973 and 11069 until APA notice-and-comment and an RFA analysis are done. Watch the 27 October conference, the First Circuit Mullin appeal, and the D.C. Circuit Chamber of Commerce appeal — not a declaration that skilled-worker visas are uncapped or that the proclamation is void.