New court filings reveal how lawyers representing non-citizen drivers will try to overturn the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's near total ban on non-domiciled CDLs.
As California argued as part of a recent filing, non-citizen drivers are perhaps even safer than U.S. citizens, and FMCSA jumped to an unreasonable conclusion with the ban, attorneys will argue.
FMCSA's attempts to ban all but a few narrow categories of visa holders from getting non-domiciled CDLs has met stiff resistance since late 2025 when the agency's first rulemaking attempt went down in flames.
In February, the agency retooled its reasoning but brought back the same ban, arguing it found widespread state failures interpreting non-citizens' work authorizations and that foreign drivers don't meet the same vetting standards, with driving records from non-U.S. jurisdictions.
The legal challenge to FMCSA's ban comes from a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient as lead plaintiff, Jorge Rivera Lujan, who has been in the U.S. since early childhood and does have domestic driving history and a safe record.
His lawyers, joined by the Teamsters, 21 states, a big waste management company, municipalities and teachers concerned about school bus drivers, and a handful of advocacy organizations, will present to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit a comprehensive rebuttal FMCSA's arguments for the ban on September 15.
[Related: Red states vs. blue states: FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL ban's legal battle escalates]
'No rational connection' between non-domiciled drivers and safety
Lujan's legal team, referred to as the petitioners, point to FMCSA stating the ban would "close a significant safety gap, and enhance the safety of the traveling public.”
While that may seem common sense to most Overdrive readers, 75% of whom in a 2025 survey expressed safety concerns over recent arrivals, petitioners argue the ban could hurt safety.
FMCSA previously tried to tie non-domiciled drivers to safety outcomes, but has abandoned that effort in the new rulemaking. The agency admits the "Rule does not rest on an assessment that alien drivers are categorically less safe than other drivers," saying it doesn't have comprehensive data to confidently assert one way or another.
FMCSA justified the ban by citing 17 reports of fatal crashes that likely involved a non-domiciled CDL driver, petitioners state, but FMCSA wouldn't disclose how many fatal crashes in total there were over the same period, and also dismisses evidence that undermines its point.
"Not only did FMCSA lack evidence that non-domiciled CDL drivers pose a greater risk than other commercial drivers, it acted in the face of evidence in the record showing that non-domiciled drivers do not present a greater safety risk," the petitioners wrote.
They go on to cite a study from Oregon that found zero crashes involving a non-domiciled CDL driver in six years of fatal crash data of Oregon-licensed drivers found zero .
[Related: State Department resumes issuing visas for commercial truck drivers as non-domiciled CDLs return]
A big study of the general population of Canada found immigrant drivers less likely to be hospitalized, and California also found non-citizens 20 to 25% less likely to be involved in a crash.
Furthermore, petitioners will argue, there's no guarantee drivers who replace the 194,000 the FMCSA expects to displace would be any safer.
"FMCSA does not dispute that replacing the 194,000 drivers that the Rule makes ineligible with less experienced drivers, or increasing driver fatigue for the drivers who pick up the slack, would present a safety risk," the petitioners write.
FMCSA debates the "driver shortage" narrative with the petitioners a bit, citing the most recent American Transportation Research Institute list of critical issues facing the industry, released in October 2025: "Driver shortage" is no longer in the top 10.
The petitioners counter that it's number 12.
FMCSA's concerns with Employment Authorization Documents (EADs)
"FMCSA asserts that the primary justification for the Rule is that drivers with EADs cannot be adequately vetted for safety fitness because they have unknown foreign driving histories," petitioners said.
But both non-domiciled and U.S. citizen drivers have to pass the same CDL skills and knowledge tests, they added. (And never mind the hundreds of shady schools closed by FMCSA over the last year.)
FMCSA has long argued that states can't vet a foreign driver's driving history for dangerous events, but federal regs allow states to forgive dangerous driving over time.
"For example, FMCSA allows drivers with serious traffic violations to regain eligibility for a CDL 120 days after a disqualifying violation," petitioners wrote. "Yet people with EADs have necessarily been in the United States for more than 120 days."
Furthermore, a "foreign spouse of a U.S. citizen, for example, is immediately eligible for permanent resident status, and thus for a CDL, even if the spouse has an extensive foreign driving history and no domestic driving experience."
Lujan himself would have had domestic driving records to show, but FMCSA specifically excluded DACA recipients from non-domiciled CDL eligibility due to their reliance on EADs, "FMCSA’s only basis for making DACA recipients ineligible to hold CDLs," as petitioners wrote. "Yet FMCSA’s rationale -- that state licensing clerks find EADs confusing -- is unsupported by data and, moreover, inadequate to support its decision."
FMCSA often points to a round of state CDL issuance audits and errors found there as proof of "systematic" problems with non-domiciled CDL issuance, but the audit data "showed only approximately 70 instances out of over 2,000 records sampled -- a 0.03 error rate," petitioners wrote.
In the end, petitioners will argue FMCSA was "arbitrary and capricious" in its rulemaking, and that in the process they stripped thousands of their livelihoods.
When the agency last lost its battle over non-domiciled CDLs in November 2025, it still managed to keep many states from issuing the licenses, while many more voluntarily shuttered their programs.
FMCSA will get opportunity to counter all petitioners' points in court in September.
[Related: FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL ban scores majority victory in clash with non-domiciled drivers]
