The larger issue of federal moves to strip commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) away from a significant chunk of those who hold them under various rules was in the background of a Washington courtroom Friday, as California and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration battled it out over the federal stoppage of the state’s ability to grant non-domiciled CDLs and a cutoff of some transportation funding.
But arguments before a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia were focused on more narrow issues. The heart of the issue is whether California cooperated adequately with FMCSA in its audit of Golden State practices, and whether the federal agency acted legally in its “pause” of new non-domiciled CDLs being issued. Non-domiciled CDL recipients are overwhelmingly immigrants.
And while the issue of federal denial of some highway funding to California was not discussed extensively in the oral arguments, it too was in the background. That funding was withheld as a result of the dispute over California’s practices, the issues that FMCSA found in its audit of the state, and what FMCSA said was California’s lack of cooperation over some issues.
The case is California Department of Motor Vehicles vs. U.S. Department of Transportation.
Dates not lining up is the issue
More specifically, a key area of dispute is whether the expiration dates of certain California non-domiciled CDLs are in violation of the law because they come after an immigrant’s legal authorization to be in the U.S.
California’ argument is that the law has no such restriction. “FMCSA pointed to no federal rule requiring CDLs to expire on or before the date of the driver’s legal presence documents,” California said in its brief. “Rather, it merely asserted that ‘the requirement that States accept as valid only unexpired lawful presence documents also means that the State must make the period of validity of the nondomiciled CLP or CDL less than or equal to the period of validity of the driver’s lawful presence documents.’”
But Simon Jerome, the Justice Department attorney representing FMCSA, said in his presentation that “It seems rather absurd that a credential for years and years, five years, eight years, could be issued with a document that expires tomorrow,” the “tomorrow” document being whatever path to legal residence the CDL or Commercial Learner’s Permit has been issued. But Jerome said that is the core of California’s arguments.
The “pause” ordered by FMCSA after the failure of the agency and the state to resolve their differences only related to the issuance of new non-domiciled CDLs or the renewal of existing licenses. As California deputy attorney general Kristen Kido said in her appearance before the court, representing the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, “not to undermine the extreme consequences of the pause, but to decertify the state entirely would apply to all commercial licenses.”
That is not in place, as she noted. But Kido said it believes that FMCSA does not have the authority “to institute a pre-enforcement, never-ending pause, particularly one that not only prohibits the DMC from issuing new licenses, but also prohibits DMV from correcting or renewing valid, unexpired licenses.”
Getting granular
Much of the presentations by the two attorneys, and the questions from the appellate judges, focused on the minutiae of timing and cooperation. Did the state’s DMC respond in a timely manner to the recommendations and mandates handed down by FMCSA after the audit of its CDL program?
At one point, Jerome engaged in a discussion with Judge Cornelia Pillard about a letter sent by the DMV to FMCSA on Christmas Eve, and whether the state’s response could have been quicker except for the holiday.
But the broader issues, Jerome said, are the questions of timing and responsiveness, which said were “the heart of this case.”
“Should FMCSA have given the DMV more time?” Jerome asked.
California did cancel numerous CDLs
The calendar comes into question even where California did cancel some non-domiciled CDLs following the FMCSA audit. Kido argued that the cancellation could be described as “substantial compliance with all of the relevant components of federal law.” But if the timeline of that cancellation did not meet certain requirements, Kido said, “a violation of the corrective schedule on its own cannot be an independent basis for the finding of noncompliance.”
The arguments by Kido and Jerome paralleled what their legal teams submitted in pre-oral argument briefs.
While there was agreement between the briefs and arguments on several points regarding federal law, the DMV brief argued that FMCSA’s reading of statutes was expansive.
But the federal view was summed up in its brief when it said “The resulting systemic violations of federal and California law are undisputed. Nearly one-third of the non-domiciled CDLs the DMV issued—roughly 20,000 out of 65,000—were improperly issued because the expiration date of the license exceeded the applicant’s period of lawful presence.”
Another case coming up
A similar argument is being fought out in the case of Lujan vs. FMCSA, where oral arguments will be made next week in the same court. While there are other issues in that case, the question of issuing a non-domiciled CDL with a duration beyond the expiration of a person’s legal ability to stay in the U.S. also is at issue in that battle as well.
Separately, North Carolina has given the green light by the Department of Transportation to again issue non-domiciled CDLs following its completion of several changes, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.
However, as the article notes, since then FMCSA has severely tightened the ability of a non-domiciled person to obtain a CDL. Those tighter restrictions are part of the Lujan case that will be argued Wednesday.
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