Jason Cannon
The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in a high-stakes legal battle that could determine whether freight brokers can be held liable for selecting unsafe trucking companies.
The case, Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, centers on the scope of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (FAAAA). The outcome could reshape the liability landscape for the multibillion-dollar logistics industry and affect the rights of victims injured in commercial truck accidents. A decision is expected by the end of the term in June.
Life-altering collision
The dispute stems from a Dec. 7, 2017, crash on Interstate 70 in Illinois. Missouri truck driver Shawn Montgomery had pulled his truck onto the shoulder for mechanical repairs when he was struck by a tractor-trailer driven by Yosniel Varela-Mojena, a driver for Indiana-based Caribe Transport II. Montgomery suffered permanent disfigurement and the loss of a leg in the collision.
Montgomery filed a state negligence lawsuit against the driver, the carrier, and C.H. Robinson, the freight broker that coordinated the shipment. He alleged that C.H. Robinson was negligent in hiring an unsafe motor carrier.
Legal tug-of-war
C.H. Robinson argues that the FAAAA’s Section 14501(c)(1) preempts such claims because they interfere with a broker’s “price, route, or service.” While a district court initially ruled that the claims fell under a “safety exception” for state regulatory authority over motor vehicles, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, shielding the broker from the lawsuit.
Before the justices, Montgomery’s counsel argued that the FAAAA was intended to stop states from enacting economic regulations, not to dismantle long-standing, safety-based tort laws.
Plaintiff attorney Paul Clement argued that while Congress sought to deregulate the economics of the transportation industry, it specifically preserved state authority over safety and contended that negligent hiring claims fall squarely within a “safety exception” for state regulations with respect to motor vehicles.
“The whole point of the tort is to keep dangerous motor vehicles off of the road,” Clement told the justices . He argued that brokers should not be “scot-free” when they hire carriers they know are poorly maintained or underinsured
C.H. Robinson counsel Theodore Boutrous Jr. noted before the court Wednesday that brokers are merely middlemen who do not own or operate vehicles, adding that the role of the broker is to match “federally approved carriers with shippers,” and there is no duty on the part of the broker to ensure they match a load with a safe carrier.
Boutrous contended that the fault of failing to provide a safe driver lies with the fleet and the driver. “The broker doesn’t know all that,” Boutrous argued, adding that brokers do not have the ability to control or inspect a motor vehicle. “Brokers aren’t safety experts.”
“Brokers don’t know the safety record of the driver. That’s confidential,” added Sopan Joshi, Assistant to the Solicitor General for the Department of Justice.
However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that “brokers could do more” to ensure safer highways. “I guess my question is, given the safety implications, why would Congress have wanted to cut it off at carriers and not include brokers when, I think, although they haven’t traditionally done it, brokers could do more to ensure that carriers are hiring safe drivers who don’t have issues with their history or whether they can read the signs or whatever it might be, and that will reduce the number of fatal trucking accidents, which is a huge problem?”
Plaintiff attorney Paul Clement contended that the state tort system could provide a trucking safety backstop. Clement claimed that 94% of motor vehicles on the road have no federal inspection data, adding that there are numerous platforms available that provide brokers with carrier safety records, enabling them to make better carrier choices.
Industry and government response
Lawyers for C.H. Robinson countered that the plain text of the law expressly preempts state tort claims. They argued the safety exception applies only to regulations with a “direct connection” to the operation of motor vehicles—a category they say excludes brokers, who do not own or operate the trucks themselves.
In a notable turn, the U.S. government filed a brief supporting C.H. Robinson. Federal officials reversed their previous stance on the issue, concluding after a fresh review that a broker’s duty to select carriers does not meet the “direct link” requirement to motor vehicles required by the statute.
BULLETIN
Monday, March 2, 2026
Contact: fmcsa.publicaffairs@dot.gov
FMCSA Seeks 18 Drivers to Help Test HOS Pilot Programs
FMCSA currently seeks 18 drivers to help the agency test and fine-tune two upcoming hours-of-service pilot programs. Over the course of six weeks, these drivers will help us make sure the study plans, training materials, and data collection tools are clear, practical, and ready for broader rollout.
This short, pre-testing phase is an important step in developing the Flexible Sleeper Berth and Split Duty Period pilot programs. Both efforts are part of the U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy’s Pro-Trucker Package and support President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14286, Enforcing Commonsense Rules of the Road for America’s Truck Drivers.
The goal of these programs is to test alternatives to the current hours-of-service requirements which have the potential to improve the lives and working conditions of American truck drivers through greater flexibility, while simultaneously maintaining equal or greater levels of safety.
FMCSA is working with researchers at Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) to develop and carry out these hours-of-service pilot programs. To vet the research designs and identify any issues with data collection tools, FMCSA needs drivers to sign up for the six-week pre-tests with VTTI.
The Agency is seeking nine drivers who currently use “split sleeper berth” options (either “8/2” or “7/3”) and, most importantly, who want to test regularly using one or both of these new split options (“6/4” and “5/5”) for six weeks.
FMCSA also needs nine drivers whose schedules currently and regularly require them to drive up to the end of their 14-hour “driving window” and would also like to test the option to “pause” the window for 30 minutes minimum and up to 3 hours maximum by taking an extra break either:
(a) off-duty or in the sleeper berth in any location, or,
(b) on-duty (not driving) at the location of a pickup or delivery of cargo
If you are a driver and would like to apply to participate in the limited pre-testing, visit FMCSA’s Hours-of-Service webpage or follow the links below.
Flexible Sleeper Berth Online Screening Questionnaire
Split Duty Period Online Screening Questionnaire
Please share this information across your networks.
Thank you,
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
U.S. Department of Transportation
Todd Dills
A new inspection bulletin from the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance of enforcement and industry outlines changes in procedure for documenting what’s traditionally known as a false-logs violation.
Such a violation is marked when an inspector determines a driver recorded a status on his/her paper log or electronic logging device contrary to the real schedule. Come April 1, when the CVSA’s annual updates to its North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria go into effect, inspectors will now differentiate between:
- Traditional “false log” violations of 49 CFR 395.8(e)(1), and
- False-log violations that are the result of the growing issue of ELD tampering, which will be recorded as violations of 49 CFR 395.8(e)(2).
The news comes after Overdrive reporting revealed CVSA at work on the bulletin last year, amid a growing trend of false-log violations clearly in evidence through the end of the year. Overdrive sister company RigDig‘s accounting of such violations in federal data shows inspectors clearly harder at work in 2025 compared to prior years.
When the new OOS criteria go into effect, a key differentiating factor separating the two types of false-log violations and associated OOS orders will be whether or not the inspector can “determine approximately when the actual drive and rest periods occurred,” said CVSA Roadside Inspection Specialist Jeremy Disbrow, speaking Tuesday, February 10, as part of a CVSA primer on OOS criteria changes.
Say a driver utilizes personal conveyance to attempt to cover over the end of an 11-hour drive or 14-hour duty period, yet just continues to advance the load for three more hours. “That driver would be declared out-of-service until the eligibility to drive is re-established,” Disbrow said.
In such a case, a 10-hour OOS order would be most likely, though a variety of false-log scenarios could result in shorter or longer periods.
For violations determined to be tampering-related, inspectors will have no ability to make a determination of just when the last rest or drive period was established. Disbrow gave an example provided by Oregon’s Department of Transportation — it’s also featured in the new inspection bulletin — in which inspectors digging back into a driver’s logs were able to use a fuel receipt from Strafford, Missouri, to show a driver’s ELD had been shifted back at least three days.
At the date and time for the fuel receipt, the log line showed the driver off-duty all day in Arizona, more than 1,000 miles away.
In such cases of ELD tampering, where a false-log violation is clear yet evidence of editing is not preserved in the device (contrary to regulatory requirements for ELD providers’ devices) and it’s impossible to determine the last rest period, the out-of-service order will be automatically 10 hours off.
Why? “Because the entire thing is a work of fiction,” Disbrow said.
New out-of-service criteria go into effect on April 1, and CVSA outlined a variety of other, mostly fairly technical changes upcoming via the document at this link.
Legislation introduced this week in the U.S. House takes another shot at DataQs reform after similar legislation stalled in the previous Congress.
Reps. Tracey Mann (R-Kansas) and Sharice Davids (D-Kansas) reintroduced the “Motor Carrier Safety Screening Modernization Act,” which would require the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to establish guidelines for states to follow in reviewing DataQs-system challenges to violations and crashes. Currently, states have the authority to establish their own review process.
The legislation would also expand access to FMCSA’s Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP), allowing motor carriers to review safety records for both prospective and current drivers rather than just for pre-employment purposes.
“The men and women who keep our supply chain efficient play a critical role in feeding, fueling, and clothing the world,” said Rep. Mann. “This commonsense legislation makes our roadways safer, gives trucking companies the tools they need to strengthen driver training and safety programs, and improves the efficiency of our supply chain. By cutting unnecessary red tape and ensuring accuracy in driver safety records, we can better support both our nation’s truckers and the businesses that rely on them every day.”
Under terms of the bill, if a citation or violation is being contested with a challenge via DataQs, the citation or violation would be required to be labeled to indicate that it is being contested in the Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS) and other relevant databases.
The bill would also amend the DataQ appeals process by requiring FMCSA to enact program participation guidelines that direct states and other federal agencies that receive Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program funding to provide for an appeals process in which, following the conclusion of a request for data review, an affected party can appeal the decision. Such an appeal would have to be adjudicated by a person other than the officer that issued the violation.
FMCSA last year proposed to essentially do just that with more impartiality in the challenge process, among other proposals.
Since 2009, the PSP has provided motor carriers access to data about driver-related safety violations during the hiring process, but current law prohibits carriers from accessing those same records after a driver is hired. The legislation would update the PSP to allow for continuous access.
According to a press release from Rep. Mann, the bill has received support from the American Trucking Associations, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, National Safety Council, Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, Specialized Carriers and Rigging Association, Truckload Carriers Association, Women in Trucking and others.
The bill was previously introduced in 2023 and passed the House Transportation Committee, but it never made it to the House floor for a vote.
Tyson Fisher
It’s official. The Environmental Protection Agency has withdrawn the 2009 endangerment finding, dismantling nearly 20 years of vehicle emission regulations. What does this mean for trucking, and where do we go from here?
On Thursday, Feb. 12, President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a final rule that invalidates a single document on which some of the most sweeping vehicle emission regulations have hinged since 2010. Zeldin called the move the “single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
“The Endangerment Finding has been the source of 16 years of consumer choice restrictions and trillions of dollars in hidden costs for Americans,” Zeldin said in a statement. “Referred to by some as the ‘Holy Grail’ of the ‘climate change religion,’ the Endangerment Finding is now eliminated. The Trump EPA is strictly following the letter of the law, returning commonsense to policy, delivering consumer choice to Americans and advancing the American Dream.”
By rescinding the endangerment finding, all federal greenhouse gas vehicle and engine emission standards for model years dating back to 2012 to present day and beyond are eliminated. It also eliminates the start-stop feature in many newer vehicles.
Trucking industry stakeholders applauded the final rule. Last August, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association told the EPA that withdrawing the endangerment finding puts trucking “back on track.”
On Thursday, OOIDA President Todd Spencer commended Lee on his “more feasible approach to emissions regulations.”
“Small-business truckers make up 96% of the trucking industry, and prior EPA greenhouse gas rules threatened to regulate many of them out of existence,” Spencer said. “Electric commercial trucks remain prohibitively expensive and impractical for small carriers due to the upfront cost, reliability concerns, and lack of charging infrastructure. Equipment affordability and uptime are essential to keeping small trucking businesses operational.”
Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) CEO Mike Spagnola called the final rule “tremendous” that will “return sanity to our nation’s environmental policies.”
“It was with great trepidation that SEMA watched our nation’s leaders demonize and ban the very motor vehicles that serve as the bedrock upon which the American people – families, small businesses, and automotive enthusiasts – rely to live their best, most prosperous lives,” Spagnola said. “It was even more infuriating to watch these policymakers brazenly justify their actions with a dubious policy position that now rightly goes away, to be replaced with a common-sense, free-market view of what drives our nation’s prosperity.”
While trucking and vehicle stakeholders take a victory lap, how withdrawing the endangerment finding will reshape the future of vehicles remains uncertain. Additionally, it does not do what many think it does for trucking emissions.
Endangerment Finding 101
To understand the effect of the EPA’s final rule, it is important to understand the endangerment finding.
Back in 1999, environmental groups asked the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases from vehicles under the Clean Air Act. In 2003, the EPA denied the request, stating it had no authority to do so. That prompted legal challenges.
In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled greenhouse gases count as “air pollutants” under that law. That meant EPA could regulate them, but only after answering one key question: Do these gases endanger public health and welfare?
EPA’s answer was the “endangerment finding,” finalized in December 2009. It became the legal trigger for later vehicle greenhouse gas rules. The finding was challenged in court, but a federal appeals court upheld it in 2012, and it stuck.
What does withdrawing the endangerment finding do?
The EPA’s final rule invalidates some big-ticket vehicle emission rules, but not all of them, and challenges are sure to come.
Perhaps the biggest rule on the chopping block is the “Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles – Phases 3,” which applies to model years 2027-32. That rule would effectively require 25% of all sleeper cab tractors to be zero-direct-emission by 2032. It is unclear how withdrawing the endangerment finding will affect truck manufacturers’ designs going forward. Model year 2027 vehicles will likely come out in the second half of this year.
Those rules and their passenger-vehicle counterparts have been blamed for sharp increases in new-vehicle prices. Since the 1990s, the consumer price index for new vehicles hovered around 145. After 2021, the index skyrocketed to nearly 180.
According to the EPA, eliminating the endangerment finding will save taxpayers more than $1.3 trillion in regulatory compliance costs. Motorists will save $2,400 on average per vehicle. The EPA also claims the new rule will “lower the cost of living on all products by making trucks cheaper.”
What the final rule does NOT do
It is worth noting that the endangerment finding paved the way for regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. Vehicle emission regulations that do not deal with greenhouse gases are not affected by the finding.
That includes rules requiring diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) and diesel particulate filters (DPF). Those regulations deal with particulate matter, not greenhouse gases, and predate the endangerment finding.
Although withdrawing the endangerment finding will have no effect on DEF, the EPA has already made moves addressing the issue.
Earlier this month, the EPA demanded information about DEF failures from manufacturers, setting the stage to roll back rules from model year 2027 and newer trucks. That follows guidance issued last year that relaxed DEF derating schedules. In January, the Department of Justice said it will no longer seek criminal charges in DEF/DPF tampering cases
OOIDA said it “will continue working with EPA to address other nonsensical rules requiring faulty DEF systems that have sidelined small-business truckers for too long.”
What’s next?
Rescinding the endangerment finding will likely face legal challenges that will put manufacturers in limbo.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the state “will challenge this illegal action in court, and will continue fighting to defend public health, uphold environmental justice, and protect future generations.” More lawsuits will likely follow.
The endangerment finding has survived legal challenges, including in the D.C. Circuit Court. That decision partially relied on the Chevron doctrine. However, the Supreme Court struck down the Chevron doctrine in 2024, leaving the issue open for relitigation.
A courtroom battle will likely be lengthy, putting manufacturers between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand, manufacturers are eager to produce vehicles that are divorced from current regulations. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents some of the largest automakers, criticized current rules.
“I’ve said it before: Automotive emissions regulations finalized in the previous administration are extremely challenging for automakers to achieve given the current marketplace demand for EVs,” Alliance for Automotive Innovation President John Bozzella said. “The auto industry in America remains focused on preserving vehicle choice for consumers, keeping the industry competitive, and staying on a long-term path of emissions reductions and cleaner vehicles.”
On the other hand, there is no guarantee that the EPA’s withdrawal of the endangerment finding will survive legal challenges. Given that designing and engineering new vehicles requires several years of planning, manufacturers risk gambling by designing future trucks that do not comply with Phase 3 rules. Losing that bet could cost billions of dollars.
The Final Rule will be officially published in the Federal Register on Friday, February 13, 2026 and will be found at: https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2026-02965/restoring-integrity-to-the-issuance-of-non-domiciled-commercial-drivers-licenses-cdl
Scopelitis
The FMCSA will publish its final rule on non-domiciled CDLs on February 13, 2026. The rule will be effective 30 days after publication. In response to the over 8,000 comments (the majority of which were against the rule), the rule makes no substantive changes from the Interim Final Rule. The rule restricts eligibility for non-domiciled CDL licenses to H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 Visa holders. The FMCSA rejected calls to revise the rule, saying that the systematic failures of the non-domiciled issuance process and the need for consistency in how non-domiciled CDLs are issued support their actions. The FMCSA notes that the enhanced vetting and interagency screening required for the identified visa holders serves as a functional proxy for driver history vetting otherwise required for U.S. drivers.
Given the avalanche of public comments, it is nearly certain that the rule will be appealed in court. And it is possible the appellants will seek to stay the implementation date to preserve the status quo during any appeal. Expect the FMCSA to vigorously oppose any request for stay – citing the “widespread and systematic failures” in the non-domiciled issuance process and recent crashes as evidence of the need for immediate action.
Importantly — the rule does not require States to cancel validly issued non-domiciled licenses, but at the next licensing transaction following the effective date of the final rule, States are required to apply new eligibility standards.
The FMCSA notes that the five-year attrition (based on potential length of existing licenses) will assist in mitigating any impact on motor carriers. However, the states have had vastly different responses to the Interim Final Rule, which has added significant complexity to the current non-domiciled licensing environment. This will likely continue while litigation related to the Final Rule plays out, making compliance challenging. Motor carriers should thoughtfully and deliberately plan for these potential changes by understanding, considering, and addressing all relevant risks.
Find the final rule here; 2026-02965
