D.C. Circuit Hears California Fight Over Non-Domiciled Truck Licenses

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Friday heard California’s challenge to the Trump Transportation Department’s freeze on non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses, the follow-on court fight after a string of fatal crashes involving drivers who should never have held the credential.

The case is California Department of Motor Vehicles v. U.S. Department of Transportation. Argument ran nearly two hours. Counsel for the California DMV and the Department of Transportation split time over whether Sacramento cooperated with a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration audit and whether FMCSA lawfully paused new and renewed non-domiciled CDLs and held back highway funds.

The number in the federal brief is the part that matters for the road. DOT told the court that “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.” That mismatch is the core of the crackdown: a commercial license that outlives the immigration document behind it.

FMCSA’s 2026 final rule, effective March 16, limits new non-domiciled CDLs and commercial learner’s permits to a short list of employment-based statuses — generally H-2A, H-2B, and E-2. Asylum applicants, TPS holders, DACA recipients, and most other work-permit holders fall outside that list. California argues the agency read the statute too broadly and punished the state for dates and data practices the DMV says it was already correcting.

The pause is not theoretical. California is not issuing new non-domiciled CDLs or CLPs while the federal stop is in place. Some transportation funding is frozen with it. A separate California state-court order earlier this year told the DMV it could not cancel thousands of existing cards without more process; that order did not restore the federal issuance authority FMCSA withdrew.

This site reported Sept. 7 on the human cost of the old system: a Haitian parolee with a Massachusetts non-domiciled CDL charged in the death of a Pennsylvania trooper; an Uzbek visa holder who failed an English test after a crash that killed a 21-year-old goalkeeper on Interstate 71; other fatal wrecks tied to licenses issued through the same loopholes. Friday’s argument is the legal case those wrecks produced.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s department has already pulled accreditation from trucking schools that certified drivers who could not meet English-proficiency rules. The D.C. Circuit panel is now being asked whether the next step — cutting off a state’s non-domiciled pipeline and the money attached to it — stays in place while the merits are decided.