A lawsuit has been filed against a new federal rule issued last month aimed at the elimination of some 194,000 non-domiciled drivers from the nation’s corps of truckers.
Public Citizen Litigation Group, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and the AFT (a national union for teachers) have filed a petition for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to challenge a rule the organizations said threatens the livelihoods of nearly 200,000 people.
Under the rule, issued by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on Sept. 29, asylum seekers, refugees, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients who have work authorization are barred from holding commercial driver’s licenses based on their immigration status.
The lawsuit, titled Rivera Lujan v. FMSCA, was filed on behalf of Jorge Rivera Lujan, Aleksei Semenovskii, AFSCME, and the AFT, and will challenge both the substance of the rule and FMCSA’s failure to follow rulemaking procedures required by law, according to a statement from the filing organizations.
“This unlawful rule seems intended to put people authorized to work in the United States out of work, solely because of the prejudices of the Trump administration,” said Wendy Liu, attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group. “We are asking the court to promptly invalidate the rule to prevent devastating consequences for our clients and the hundreds of thousands of people across the country who depend on commercial driver’s licenses for their livelihoods.”
When Rivera Lujan, a DACA recipient and truck driver of 11 years who owns his own trucking company, went to renew his license on Sept. 30, he was told that he could not do so because of the new rule, according to the lawsuit.
“Without a commercial driver’s license, I will lose my business and the income that allows me to provide for my family,” said Lujan, who has lived in the United States since he was two years old. “I have followed all the rules and complied with all requirements set by the government.”
When enacting the final rule, the FMCSA cited five serious crashes involving non-domiciled drivers.
One of those crashes occurred in early August when three people died when the vehicle they were in slammed into a tractor-trailer making an illegal u-turn on the Florida Turnpike. That truck was driven by an Indian national who entered the U.S. illegally, and had received a commercial driver’s license from California, and a previous one from Washington.
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