President Donald Trump speaks before signing executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on September 19, 2025 in Washington, DC.

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A federal judge on Monday vacated President Donald Trump's $100,000 fee for employers' H-1B visa applications.

The policy implementing the large fees on high-skilled worker visas violated the federal Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution, Judge Leo Sorokin declared in the ruling in U.S. District Court in Boston.

Sorokin agreed with the 20 Democratic-led states that brought the suit in finding "the substance and application of the $100,000 payment reveal that it is a tax," and that Congress had not delegated that power to the executive branch.

The judge cited precedent that the Supreme Court set in February, when it struck down Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs on the grounds that he lacked the legal authority to impose them.

In that case, the high court ruled that tariffs assessed by the Department of Homeland Security "amount to taxes for the purposes of the Constitution's Taxing Clause," Sorokin noted. The Homeland Security Department is a defendant in the H-1B case.

The Trump administration plans to appeal the ruling.

The H-1B policy was created in 1990 and is heavily used by U.S. tech giants to bring in high-skilled workers from overseas. The program allows U.S. employers to seek government permission to hire nonimmigrant workers in specialty occupations for up to six years.

Trump implemented the $100,000 fee in a presidential proclamation last September. He argued that the H-1B visa program was being misused and undermining U.S. economic and national security through the "large-scale replacement of American workers."

Prior to the change, H-1B visa fees had ranged from $2,000 to $5,000 per application, CNBC previously reported.

Several companies, including Walmart, said that they would pause their participation in the H-1B program as a result of Trump's proclamation.

The program is capped at 65,000 visas annually, plus an additional 20,000 for those with a master's degree or doctorate from a U.S. institution. But just 85 payments of the $100,000 fee had been made as of February 15, the Trump administration said in a March filing, Reuters reported.

White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told CNBC in a statement after Monday's ruling, "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."

"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," Rogers said.

The lawsuit was filed in December against the Trump administration and a number of top officials. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in October filed its own lawsuit challenging the $100,000 H-1B visa policy.