As the U.S. Department of Transportation's push to essentially ban nearly 200,000 non-domiciled drivers from CDL eligibility nears its big moment of oral arguments in the second highest court in the land, political battle lines have been drawn.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration since September of 2025 has sought to end CDL eligibility for all non-citizens besides a few with specific business visas.
By November 2025, that rulemaking had been blocked after a court sided with a legal petitioner Jorge Rivera Lujan, a Mexican citizen and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient who has been in the U.S. since he was two years old and holds a non-domiciled CDL.
[Related: Meet the owner-op who stopped FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL purge]
FMCSA in February made another rulemaking attempt that refined its arguments and has so far succeeded where the September rulemaking failed. In September of this year, however, the case will head to oral arguments in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
With that date coming up, states have begun filing legal challenges and amicus briefs of their own, split pretty cleanly down red and blue lines.
First, the states against FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL rule are the 21, plus D.C., listed below:
Massachusetts, California, New York, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington State.
The states in favor of the non-domiciled rule are the 23 below:
Florida, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia
Only six states in the nation haven't weighed in yet. Those are New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
From the beginning, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy has stressed the move against non-domiciled CDL drivers was about safety and fixing a CDL system that was "absolutely 100 percent broken" and a "national emergency that requires action right now."
Over the next several months, Duffy routinely held press conferences calling out Democrat-led states for poor CDL issuance practices while typically taking a quieter approach against Republican-led states.
Still, Duffy has always claimed "this is a space where politics doesn't belong," when speaking about the rulemaking.
Yet the states' petitions for and against the rule get into the nitty gritty of safety impacts, procedural questions, and the logic and fairness behind the DOT's push against non-domiciled drivers.
The case against FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL ban
The states arguing against FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL ban lay out a lengthy case.
First, they argue the rule "violate[s] statutes requiring the federal government to reduce paperwork burdens and minimize the release of sensitive private information" by inquiring about citizenship or visa statuses.
Second, the states argue losing non-domiciled CDL drivers would impede their ability to deliver critical public services. Recently, a waste management company argued the same, saying it had already lost dozens of drivers to the rule and was having trouble filling routes.
[Related: Trash collector attacks logic behind FMCSA's non-domiciled ban]
Finally, they argue FMCSA "promulgated the Final Rule without ever consulting their partners in state government. Instead, FMCSA simply announced its chosen policy," something which "federal law does not tolerate."
The case for FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL ban
Led by Florida, the petition in favor of FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL ban invokes Florida's lawsuit against California over the licensing of non-citizens involved in deadly crashes in the state.
The petition includes some explosive claims, citing a recent talk show appearance by White House top brass as saying "up to a third of CDLs are held by illegal immigrants" -- far greater than the 5%, or 200,000, the FMCSA initially estimated.
The petition cites a handful of egregious, deadly crashes caused by non-domiciled CDL drivers and the Supreme Court's dismissal of Florida's case against California as proof that FMCSA's rule must stand.
"As these tragedies show," the petition reads, citing the deadly crashes, "the final rule didn’t arise from a vacuum. It was the federal government’s response to a string of tragic yet entirely preventable accidents caused by insufficient protection and regulation over illegal immigrants and CDLs. The final rule should stand."
In 2025, Overdrive polling found only 25% of its readers in favor of CDLs for non-citizens.
