Political divide: red states back non-domiciled CDL changes

Friends on both sides

The lawsuit filed with driver Jorge Rivera Lujan also has drawn as plaintiffs the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Teachers. Numerous states led by Democratic governors are also listed as amicus curiae for Lujan, ranging from Arizona to Washington. 

The rule made final in February greatly restricts the ability of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to allow states to issue CDLs to foreign-domiciled residents. The classification of foreign-born residents who FMCSA said can still be issued a CDL are those who hold H-2A, H-2B, or E-2 status. As the states say in their brief, “because applicants for these statuses undergo careful screening by multiple federal agencies, any applicant’s unsafe driving history comes to light. Then States know who is too dangerous to possess a CDL.”

The D.C. Court of Appeals already denied a request for a stay in FMCSA’s implementation of the rule.

The arguments put forth by the red states in the relatively brief filing are in line with the points that have been made by the backers of the rule since it was first proposed last year.

A list of crashes

Exhibit A in the red states’ argument is the horrific crash that occurred when Harjinder Singh, who was not in the U.S. legally and driving on a license granted by California, made a U-turn on a Florida highway, resulting in a crash that killed three persons in a passenger car. It received wide news coverage and has become the poster crash for backers of the FMCSA rule.

The Singh crash is followed in the brief by summations of similar type fatal incidents in California, Tennessee, Indiana and Oregon.

“As these tragedies show, the final rule didn’t arise from a vacuum,” the brief says. “It was the federal government’s response to a string of tragic yet entirely preventable accidents caused by insufficient protection and regulation over illegal immigrants and CDLs. The final rule should stand.”

FMCSA, according to the brief, needed to step into what the states see as a gap in state enforcement of standards to keep unsafe drivers off the road. 

“Recent Supreme Court decisions…have made it clear that States can only do so much to address this problem alone,” the brief says. “Because the Final Rule cracks down on the unauthorized CDLs which threaten the States’ people and roads, (the states in the brief) support the rule.”

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