Why an Appeals Court Paused FMCSA’s Non-Domiciled CDL Order
Judges Say the Agency Skipped Required Steps, Lacked Safety Evidence
Key Takeaways:
- The court’s stay centers on its view that FMCSA likely violated a statutory requirement to consult states before tightening non-domiciled CDL eligibility.
- Judges questioned FMCSA’s safety rationale, citing the agency’s own data showing non-domiciled drivers make up 5% of CDL holders but about 0.2% of fatal crashes.
- The panel signaled that the rule may be arbitrary and capricious because FMCSA did not adequately explain expected safety benefits or account for drivers’ reliance on existing CDL rules.
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A federal appeals court on Nov. 13 blocked a new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rule that would sharply restrict states’ ability to issue or renew commercial driver licenses for drivers who live and operate commercial vehicles in the U.S. but are officially domiciled elsewhere. The decision pauses the rule while a legal challenge moves forward.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit , saying the petitioners challenging the rule met the “stringent requirements for a stay pending court review.”
The petitioners include individual truck drivers and multiple labor organizations. The lead petitioner is Jorge Rivera Lujan, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient who runs a trucking business and has held a non-domiciled CDL for 11 years but was unable to renew it due to the rule.
The court also dissolved an earlier administrative stay that had been in place since Nov. 10, and allowed several industry groups to file friend-of-the-court briefs supporting both sides.
CDL Eligibility
FMCSA’s interim final rule, published Sept. 29, limited non-domiciled CDLs to individuals holding specific visa classifications — H-2A (temporary agricultural workers), H-2B (temporary non-agricultural workers) or E-2 (foreign investors from treaty countries) — instead of a broader range of immigration documents previously accepted.
RELATED:Duffy Vows to Fight Court’s Pause on Non-Domiciled CDLs
The court noted that the agency “narrowed the circumstances in which states may grant or renew” non-domiciled CDLs. Historically, these licenses are held by drivers who live and work in the U.S. but maintain legal domicile abroad.
Notifying States
The court indicated that the petitioners are likely to succeed on several arguments, including a claim that FMCSA issued the rule without following a statutory requirement to consult with states before setting CDL standards.
FMCSA had argued that consultation was “not practicable” because of time constraints and that compliance costs for states would not be “substantial.” However, the court said the law “contains no exceptions for insubstantial costs or impracticability,” and added that the agency “conceded in the rulemaking that the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Act subjects this rule to the state-consultation requirement.”
Safety Rationale
The court also signaled skepticism toward the agency’s justification for issuing the rule without a customary notice-and-comment period that allows public input. While FMCSA invoked an emergency “good cause” exception based on safety concerns to advance the rule, the judges pointed to the agency’s own admission that it lacked “sufficient evidence, derived from well-designed, rigorous, quantitative analyses, to reliably demonstrate a measurable empirical relationship between the nation of domicile for a CDL driver and safety outcomes in the United States.”
The order also highlighted FMCSA figures showing that non-domiciled CDL holders represent about 5% of all CDL drivers but account for approximately 0.2% of fatal crashes. According to the court, the agency’s projection that less-experienced drivers would replace those removed by the rule raised further questions about whether the change would result in any “net safety benefit.”
(O2O Creative/Getty Images)
More broadly, the court said the petitioners are also likely to prevail on a claim that the rule was arbitrary and capricious — a legal standard meaning the agency acted unreasonably or without proper justification — stressing that FMCSA did not appear to offer a sufficient explanation for how the change would improve road safety.
The panel wrote that FMCSA “does not appear to have ‘articulate[d] a satisfactory explanation’ for how the rule would promote safety,” adding that the agency did not adequately account for the “serious reliance interests” of drivers who already hold non-domiciled CDLs and have built their livelihoods around them.
The order cited FMCSA’s expectation that displaced drivers could find “similar employment in other sectors” with “some de minimis costs,” but said the rulemaking offered no evidence to support those assumptions.
Judge Dissents Over Safety
Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson dissented from the majority, arguing that an emergency stay was not appropriate and that the issues should instead be resolved through an expedited merits process.
She wrote that FMCSA acted to close what it viewed as a safety gap involving drivers with foreign driving histories that states cannot easily verify. According to the dissent, the agency concluded that allowing drivers with “unchecked driving histories” to operate commercial trucks and buses in the U.S. posed a “serious risk.”
The dissent also pointed to past spikes in CDL applications when changes were announced in advance, specifically citing a surge before February 2022 training requirements took effect. Henderson said FMCSA had reasonable grounds to believe early notice of this rule could produce a similar “concentrated surge” of applications from drivers who would later become ineligible.
What’s Next
The stay blocks the new restrictions nationwide while the underlying cases proceed. Until the court issues a decision on the merits, states may continue issuing and renewing non-domiciled CDLs under the prior federal rules.
Some states, however, have already amended their CDL rules.
RELATED:Nevada to Eliminate Nearly 1,000 Non-Domiciled CDLs
The lawsuit now moves into full briefing and argument, where the legality of the interim final rule will be considered in greater depth. The court has not set a timeline for its final decision.
Generative AI assisted in the creation of this article.
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