District Court Sets Aside DOL And DHS H-1B Regulations

On December 1, 2020 the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California set aside two regulations that had been issued by the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), each of which significantly impacted H-1B visas.

As described in our prior  alerts, these interim final rules issued by DHS and DOL narrowed the definition of "specialty occupation" for H-1B classification, and changed the way DOL calculates Prevailing Wages for both the H-1B, H-1B1 and E-3 Labor Condition Application (LCA) program and the PERM Labor Certification program, which had resulted in dramatically higher prevailing wages.

In Chamber of Commerce v. DHS,  the District Court struck down these two rules and held that neither DOL nor DHS had a justification to rush the publication and implementation of these regulations without following the required notice and comment periods as required by the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). Finding that there