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The Trump administration wants the California H-1B fee lawsuit put on hold while it appeals, and the employers and workers who brought the case want the opposite: a fast track to a final ruling on the $100,000 payment. The split, set out in an Oct. 20 joint case management statement in Global Nurse Force v. Trump and reported by the Indian news agency IANS on Oct. 27, will not be argued until a Jan. 14, 2027 hearing on the government’s stay request, according to that report. The case that froze the fee policies in September is therefore unlikely to reach a final judgment this year.
For employers, nothing changes today. U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam’s Sept. 30 order in the Northern District of California vacated the agency policies used to collect the payment until the agencies complete notice-and-comment rulemaking. A separate injunction from Massachusetts, in California v. Mullin, also blocks the fee and is on appeal at the First Circuit. Employers that filed new petitions without the payment have started receiving approvals. What the scheduling fight decides is how long that relief keeps resting on preliminary orders that an appeals court could undo.
Two plans for the same case
The plaintiffs proposed that the government hand over the administrative record, the documents the agencies relied on, by Nov. 3, according to IANS. In a case under the Administrative Procedure Act that record is what the court judges the policy against, so without it there can be no summary judgment. The plaintiffs also told the court they are watching whether the agencies comply with the Sept. 30 order and may ask the judge to enforce it.
The government proposed producing the record 30 days after the Ninth Circuit issues its mandate, or 30 days after any order denying a stay. It argues that the appeal raises “threshold jurisdictional issues” and that more motion practice now would be wasteful and could produce a second, duplicative appeal. The government appealed and asked for the stay on Oct. 9, and the plaintiffs opposed it on Oct. 13, according to the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse at the University of Michigan Law School, which tracks the docket.
The government’s most revealing point is that the California outcome “will not change any status quo,” IANS reported, because of the universal injunction in Massachusetts. Describing that order as universal amounts to an acknowledgment that, while it stands, the payment cannot be collected anywhere. It also shows where the government sees the real contest: in the appeals courts, not in Oakland.
Why the H-1B fee lawsuit calendar matters
Time is not neutral here. Proclamation 11069, signed Sept. 18, 2026, extended the payment through Sept. 21, 2027. If the California case stays frozen until the Ninth Circuit rules, a final judgment on the merits could arrive close to the date the extension ends. By then DHS may also have finalized its separate proposal for a $103,265 fee on cap-subject petitions, published Aug. 25, 2026. That fee would rest on a regulation rather than a proclamation, so any challenge to it would be a new lawsuit, and today’s court orders would not cover it automatically.
The payment is now before three appeals courts: the Ninth Circuit in this case, the First Circuit in California v. Mullin, and the D.C. Circuit in Chamber of Commerce v. DHS, argued March 9, 2026, after a district judge there upheld the fee. A ruling against the government in any one of them would not bind the others, and a split among the circuits is the kind of conflict that tends to draw Supreme Court review. Meanwhile, hospitals and physician groups are pressing Congress for an exemption, and only part of the wider H-1B overhaul binds employers today.
What to watch: whether Judge Gilliam rules on the stay before the Jan. 14 hearing; whether he orders the record produced on the plaintiffs’ Nov. 3 timetable; any enforcement motion over compliance with the Sept. 30 order; and the first appellate decision from any of the three circuits.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources: IANS, “H-1B $100,000 fee case: Plaintiffs push for summary judgment, Trump administration seeks pause” (Oct. 27-28, 2026); Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, Global Nurse Force v. Trump, No. 4:25-cv-08454 (N.D. Cal.); DHS, Fee for Certain H-1B Petitions, proposed rule (Federal Register, Aug. 25, 2026); State of California v. Mullin, No. 26-1699, order denying stay pending appeal (1st Cir. July 24, 2026).
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