OOIDA asks Supreme Court to review ELD mandate case

The international trade association has asked the Supreme Court to review its case on the electronic logging mandate, and to determine whether the rule violated the Fourth Amendment.    The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review its case on the electronic logging mandate.
   In its petition to the Supreme Court, the international trade association asked the court to determine whether the electronic logging device (ELD) rule violated the Fourth Amendment by failing to create a regulatory structure at the state and federal levels that serves as a substitute for a warrant.
   The OOIDA, which represents independent truck drivers, has over 158,000 members in the U.S. and Canada.
   OOIDA’s litigation counsel, the Cullen Firm, filed the Petition for Writ of Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking the court to review the ruling handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in October 2016.
   “As you might imagine, we were very disappointed and surprised by the ruling against us by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals,” OOIDA President and CEO Jim Johnston said. “We were surprised because this same court ruled in our favor on the earlier electronic log regulation that was designed to require monitoring systems on carriers that had accumulated a significant number of hours-of-service violations.”
   The filing alleges that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration failed to meet legal thresholds that would allow it to sidestep search and seizure protections in the Fourth Amendment.
   OOIDA argued the 24/7 monitoring of truck drivers via the electronic logs constitutes a form of surveillance.
   Johnston said if the court agrees to hear the case, the association’s lawyers will argue that mandatory ELDs are unconstitutional under the search and seizure provisions of the Fourth Amendment.
   “We believe that the Seventh Circuit erred in allowing warrantless searches of 3.5 million drivers, designed specifically to uncover evidence of criminal activity,” Johnston said. “In doing so, the Seventh Circuit decision splits directly with rulings by both the Fifth and Eleventh Circuit Courts.”