That latest filing in the case of owner-operator Jorge Rivera Lujan, et al. v. the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration asks for an emergency stay of the government's final rule restricting non-domiciled CDL eligibility.
- With judicial review requested in the immediate wake of the FMCSA's final rule on non-domiciled CDLs, petitioners' new filing seeks stay of the rule's March 16 effective date.
- Petitioners argue the review is likely to find the FMCSA's rule "arbitrary and capricious," causing "irreparable harm" to the petitioners and with "negative consequences nationwide."
- FMCSA, according to the petitioners' filing, on Feb. 19 denied their request to the agency for a stay pending the court's review.
- The filing comes as President Donald Trump and members of Congress seek to codify in law the terms of the Final Rule with respect to non-citizen drivers' CDL eligibility, among other provisions related to English language proficiency and state CDL programs broadly.
- Full text of the petition for stay can be accessed via this link.
These particular petitioners have succeeded in halting FMCSA's moves to restrict non-domiciled CDL eligibility before, as reported when the D.C. federal appeals court granted the prior request for a stay, halting the previous Interim Final Rule (IFR) in November 2025. The court ultimately allowed FMCSA to move forward with its notice-and-comment period for a formal rulemaking and potential changes to the rule's terms, issued earlier this month.
The latest filing argues that changes aimed at addressing objections to the rule simply are not to be found in the FMCSA's Final Rule. "The Rule is substantively identical to the IFR," petitioners argue.
[Related: FMCSA issues Final Rule banning non-domiciled CDLs almost entirely]
The prior, November emergency stay of the IFR, according to the latest petition, saw the court hold that "Petitioners were likely to succeed on their claim that FMCSA acted arbitrarily and capriciously in issuing the IFR. The Court observed that 'FMCSA’s own data appears to indicate that the CDL holders excluded by the rule are involved in fatal crashes at a lower rate than CDL holders who are not excluded' and that 'non-domiciled CDL holders account for approximately 5 percent of all CDL holders but only about 0.2 percent of fatal crashes.'”
FMCSA addressed some of those concerns in the final rule by outlining many more than the five deadly accidents involving non-domiciled CDL holders documented in justifying its initial IFR.
"FMCSA identified 17 fatal crashes in 2025 that were caused by actions of non-domiciled CDL holders," according to the text of the agency's final rule. Such CDL holders' "fitness could not be ensured and thus would be ineligible under this new rule. FMCSA did not identify, out of all the crashes the Agency reviewed, any that were caused by non-domiciled CDL holders who would remain eligible under the revised regulations."
The crashes "resulted in 30 fatalities and numerous severe injuries, underscoring the lethal consequences of allowing unvetted operators behind the wheel of CMVs," FMCSA noted in the rule, adding that it believes the prior state-administered process for "foreign-domiciled drivers was insufficient to screen for high-risk drivers."
Stil, petitioners with this latest filing again argue they are likely to succeed on the merits of their charge that the non-domiciled CDL restrictions have been promulgated in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner, offering the argument that FMCSA appeared to have sought out evidence to newly restrict non-domiciled CDL eligibility only after predetermining the outcome.
"FMCSA first decided on the outcome of the rulemaking and only then looked for reasons to support it," according to the petition.
The petition makes five arguments for the "arbitrary and capricious" case, again alleging FMCSA's "safety justification is unsupported," that state-CDL-rules-compliance justifications don't support the new restrictions, and that driving-history justifications for the restrictions fail to support the rule.
On the last point, DACA recipients like Jorge Rivera Lujan, which the new restrictions would exclude from CDL eligibility, the petition notes, "have exclusively U.S. driving histories because they necessarily came to the United States when they were children and have 'continuously resided' from 2007 until the time of their request for DACA status." [Emphasis in the original.]
FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs, speaking to attendees of the Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association Thursday this week cast the FMCSA's moves to restrict non-domiciled CDLs as part of efforts to make certain that "the CDL is strengthened" and that "the person is qualified, ... that the CDL actually means something."
The petition asks for prompt court review of the rule, and a stay of the March 16 effective date pending such review.
Read more of the petitioners' arguments, and FMCSA's own final rule justifications, via those links.
[Related: FMCSA chief emphasizes aggressive approach to CDL qualifications]
