A U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Circuit voted against an emergency motion aimed at blocking a federal rule that revokes nearly 200,000 non-domiciled CDLs.
In an order filed on Tuesday, May 5, the three-judge panel voted 2-1 to deny a stay of the rule pending completion of the lawsuit. Instead, the court granted the petitioners’ request for an expedited trial.
The lawsuit centers around the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s non-domiciled CDL rule, which took effect on March 16. Under the rule, an Employment Authorization Document is no longer enough to obtain a non-domiciled CDL. Additionally, asylum seekers, asylees, refugees and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients are ineligible.
Jorge Rivera Lujan, a DACA recipient who has been in the U.S. since he was 2 years old and a truck driver for the past 11 years, argues that the rule’s decision to revoke his CDL is not rooted in safety.
“These cases concern the terms on which aliens domiciled outside the United States may receive licenses to drive trucks, buses, and other commercial motor vehicles inside the United States,” the majority judges wrote. “The regulation under review responds to a longstanding concern that state licensing authorities cannot adequately review pertinent driving records and recent evidence that the authorities cannot consistently decipher one of the forms used to establish license eligibility. The regulation addresses the first concern by restricting eligibility to foreign-domiciled aliens who have visas that enable consular review of driving records abroad. It addresses the second concern by requiring use of a different form that more clearly establishes eligibility requirements.”
Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao said that an emergency stay is unwarranted.
“We deny a stay because the petitioners have not shown a strong likelihood of success,” the judges wrote. “But we grant expedition given the lack of opposition, the importance of the questions presented, and the significant government and private interests implicated.”
FMCSA contends that the rule is critical to highway safety because thousands of drivers were issued non-domiciled CDLs without proper vetting. When a U.S. driver applies for a CDL, their driving history is reviewed. The agency contends that this is often not possible for applicants from other countries.
The petitioners argued that the safety rationale does not apply to DACA recipients, who have resided in the U.S. since childhood.
However, the judges explained FMCSA’s reasoning.
“To begin with, allowing DACA recipients to use EADs to document eligibility would present substantial administrability and compliance problems,” the judges wrote. “State licensing clerks cannot accurately distinguish whether an EAD code is a permissible basis for issuance of a non-domiciled CDL to a DACA recipient. In particular, clerks mistake DACA coding for other codes that indicate different statuses like Deferred Action or Alien Granted Deferred Action. This would create the same problems with the improper issuance of non-domiciled … CDLs that the final rule sought to prevent. Some of these mistakes – like issuing the wrong category of license to an alien – would implicate primarily compliance concerns. But others – like issuing CDLs to non-DACA Deferred Action aliens with potentially significant foreign driving histories – would implicate the safety concerns at the core of the final rule.”
Now that the motion to stay the ruling has been denied, the lawsuit will continue in an expedited fashion. The petitioners’ briefs are due June 15, while the defendants’ deadline to respond is July 15. Final briefs are due Aug. 5. LL
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