A federal appeals court temporarily blocked a Department of Transportation (DOT) policy narrowing the conditions under which states may issue commercial driver’s licenses to noncitizens.
The ruling, issued last week, said the federal government could not “articulate a satisfactory explanation for how the rule would promote safety.”
“Whereas the FMCSA does not appear to have demonstrated any safety benefit from the rule, the county petitioner has furnished evidence that the rule would harm public safety by forcing it to replace safer experienced drivers with less-safe new drivers,” it stated.
Circuit Judge Karen L. Henderson, who dissented from the decision, argued that the government has made a “reasonable determination” that allowing commercial drivers’ license holders with “unverified driving histories on our roadways is unsafe.”
The case centers on an interim rule that “restores the integrity of the commercial driver’s license (CDL) issuance processes by significantly limiting the authority for [State Driver’s Licensing Agencies] to issue and renew non-domiciled commercial learner’s permits (CLPs) and CDLs to individuals domiciled in a foreign jurisdiction,” the Federal Register explains.
Last week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) admitted to illegally issuing 17,000 non-domiciled Commercial Driver’s Licenses (CDLs) to foreign drivers endangering Americans.
“After weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong, Gavin Newsom and California have been caught red-handed. Now that we’ve exposed their lies, 17,000 illegally issued trucking licenses are being revoked,” Duffy said in a statement. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. My team will continue to force California to prove they have removed every illegal immigrant from behind the wheel of semi-trucks and school buses.”
