Dive Brief:
- A U.S. Appeals Court in D.C. ordered on Monday a temporary stop to a Sept. 29 Department of Transportation interim final rule involving tougher restrictions on non-domiciled CDLs.
- Two of three judges approved the administrative stay, which puts the DOT emergency measure on hold while the case proceeds.
- “The purpose of this administrative stay is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency motions for stay pending review and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of those motions,” the order said.
Dive Insight:
The case comes from two truckers as well as multiple labor organizations challenging the DOT’s emergency order, which the federal government says relates to safety.
The federal government said it found systemic problems across the U.S. in issuing non-domiciled CDLs, and officials “identified at least five fatal accidents involving 12 deaths in which non-domiciled CDL holders were behind the wheel in the first nine months of 2025.”
The DOT emergency order, which was effective immediately, heightened protocols that states must follow when issuing CDLs and commercial driver permits to non-domiciled applicants, referring to foreigners. That meant a ban on “asylum seekers, asylees, refugees, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients,” according to the DOT’s emergency order.
Non-domiciled CDLs have been available since 2011 to people who are in the U.S. lawfully even though they’re not U.S. citizens or permanent residents, according to a legal filing by the petitioners.
The lead petitioner in the case, Jorge Rivera Lujan, has been a DACA recipient and in the U.S. since age 2. He runs a trucking business and has held a non-domiciled CDL for 11 years but was unable to renew it in Utah in late September due to the DOT’s emergency order, according to the filing.
“While the policy itself is sound, it is now tied up in court over procedural technicalities in how the rule was issued, not its substance,” Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association President Todd Spencer said in an emailed statement. He said that a bill introduced in Congress would make the changes permanent, saying loopholes with non-domiciled CDLs “have allowed unqualified drivers onto our highways, putting professional truckers and the motoring public at risk.”
Labor groups also included in the petition against the federal government include Public Citizen Litigation Group, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (part of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) and the American Federation of Teachers.
