Arbritrary. Capricious. Those two words are a principal basis for owner-operator Jorge Rivera Lujan and fellow petitioners’ challenge to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's non-domiciled CDL rule. The rule itself is strongly supported by most in Overdrive's audience, and the petitioners’ challenge saw significant action in the D.C. federal appeals court last week Tuesday, September 15.
Tip of the hat to Overdrive’s own Alex Lockie for this early coverage of the discussions, laying out the reasoning plaintiffs' attorneys utilized to argue the arbitrary and capricious nature of the rule in efforts to knock it down entirely.
Lockie’s done a voluminous amount of work around the non-domiciled CDL phenomenon since the full extent of those licenses for foreign non-immigrant visitors to the United States became known last year. He did the research, offering this first attempt at a comprehensive public accounting of active non-domiciled licenses last year.
[Related: Overdrive reporting reveals at least 60,000 non-domiciled CDLs]
And since then, with FMCSA’s moves to restrict eligibility last Fall, Lockie’s covered in-depth the legal ramifications as challenges have emerged from non-domiciled operators themselves, including the named plaintiff on this case in Jorge Rivera Lujan.
Regular Overdrive Radio listeners here have heard from Lujan directly, including this past Spring at the Mid-America Trucking Show. The owner-operator is a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient, and he’s been in the U.S. since he was a child, yet remains a non-citizen.
Today on the podcast, sit in on the discussion amongst those who argued last Thursday on his behalf, and in defense of FMCSA's rule, before a three-judge panel in the D.C. federal appeals court. We learned a good bit from FMCSA’s attorney from the Justice Department, Simon Jerome, about the history of the non-domiciled CDL rules for non-citizens. Jerome noted the "safety gap" in foreign driving records the agency lived with until last year, when they sought the change after a series of crashes by non-domiciled drivers.
Fundamentally, as suggested above, the case hinges on what FMCSA did or didn’t do to adequately justify the rule that strips an estimated 194,000 non-citizen drivers from CDL eligibility. Read Lockie's detail of the arguments at this link, and in the podcast, hear the crosstalk in full. It makes for a fascinating window on legal proceedings at work, with the fate of FMCSA’s rule change hanging in the balance.
Get a full rundown of how we got here with the non-domiciled CDL rule in Lockie's report ahead of the Sept. 15 showdown in court.
[Related: FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL ban takes a beating in court]
