Pacifica client King County secured an emergency stay in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals of a new U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) rule that threatened to strip immigrants of their commercial driver’s licenses. Announced in September, the rule made nearly 200,000 work-authorized immigrants ineligible for commercial driver’s licenses solely because they lacked certain visas. Among those affected by the rule were asylum seekers, asylees, refugees, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, who, without such licenses, would lose their jobs as truck or bus drivers.
King County sought review of the rule because it risked losing more than 50 active and trainee immigrant bus drivers employed by transit agency King County Metro, in addition to 50 other supervisors, mechanics, and other employees who require commercial driver’s licenses. If allowed to stand, King County argued in its motion for an emergency stay, the rule would upend the lives of Metro’s immigrant employees, and disrupt public transportation service for nearly 2.5 million county residents.
The DOT claims the rule was put in place to improve public safety on the nation’s roadways, but King County’s motion challenged that notion and argued the true purpose of the rule is to further President Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda. “At no point did DOT indicate that it had engaged with meaningful evidence about the relationship between immigration status and safety,” the petition argued. “Instead, the [rule] is another tool to weed out immigrants that are lawfully present and eligible to work in the United States.”
King County’s case was consolidated with that of other petitioners represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The respondents named in the lawsuit include the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the U.S. Department of Transportation operating administration that issued the rule.
On November 13, the D.C. Circuit granted an emergency stay pending review. In granting the emergency stay, the court ruled that King County and the other petitioners are likely to succeed in demonstrating that the FMCSA improperly issued the rule without consulting the States or providing the usual opportunity for notice and comment. The court also ruled that the petitioners are likely to succeed in showing that the FMCSA acted arbitrarily and capriciously in issuing the rule because, among other things, its “own data appears to indicate that the [commercial driver’s license] holders excluded by the rule are involved in fatal crashes at a lower rate than [commercial driver’s license] holders who are not excluded.” And it explained that “[w]hereas the FMCSA does not appear to have demonstrated any safety benefit from the rule, the county petitioner has furnished evidence that the rule would harm public safety by forcing it to replace safer experienced drivers with less-safe new drivers.”
The ruling was celebrated by workers and immigrant advocates who filed amicus briefs in support of petitioners.
The Pacifica litigation team representing King County includes Paul Lawrence, Kevin Kennedy, and Eugene Lee.
