Attorney General Charity Clark has joined a coalition of states in filing an amicus brief that opposes the Trump Administration’s policy imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa petitions. The brief was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in support of Global Nurse Force, which is challenging the fee.
H-1B visas allow U.S. employers to hire skilled foreign workers for specialized roles, including physicians, researchers, nurses, and teachers. These workers help address labor shortages across sectors such as health care and education, especially in rural and underserved areas. Vermont’s public and private employers depend on hundreds of H-1B visa holders to fill essential positions in research, health care, education, and technology.
The Trump Administration introduced the $100,000 fee through a presidential proclamation in September 2025. The Department of Homeland Security implemented this policy for applications filed after September 21, 2025. According to the amicus brief, this fee could make it much harder for hospitals, schools, and universities to hire H-1B workers and meet critical needs.
The brief also argues that the administration did not follow required notice-and-comment rulemaking procedures before adopting the new fee. This omission prevented states from expressing concerns about how the fee could harm their economies as well as their education and health care systems.
“The amicus brief argues that H-1B workers are critical to the economies of the amici states and to addressing employment shortages in key fields. In Vermont, public and private employers rely on the services of hundreds of H-1B visa-holders to fill critical roles in research, health care, education, and technology that would otherwise go unfulfilled.”
A copy of the amicus brief is available on the Vermont Attorney General’s website.