{"id":114610,"date":"2025-12-31T05:45:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T05:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/114610\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T05:45:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T05:45:12","slug":"california-delays-revoking-commercial-drivers-licenses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/114610\/","title":{"rendered":"California delays revoking commercial driver’s licenses"},"content":{"rendered":"

A week after immigrant groups filed a lawsuit<\/a>, California said Tuesday it will delay the revocations of 17,000<\/a> commercial driver\u2019s licenses until March to allow more time to ensure that truckers and bus drivers who legally qualify for the licenses can keep them.<\/p>\n

But U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the state may lose $160 million if it doesn\u2019t meet a Jan. 5 deadline to revoke the licenses. He already withheld $40 million<\/a> in federal funding because he said California isn\u2019t enforcing English proficiency requirements for truckers.<\/p>\n

California only sent out notices to invalidate the licenses after Duffy pressured the state<\/a> to make sure immigrants who are in the country illegally aren\u2019t granted the licenses. An audit found problems like licenses that remained valid long after an immigrant\u2019s authorization to be in the country expired or licenses where the state couldn\u2019t prove it checked a driver\u2019s immigration status. <\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia does NOT have an \u2018extension\u2019 to keep breaking the law and putting Americans at risk on the roads,\u201d Duffy posted on the social platform X.<\/p>\n

The Transportation Department has been prioritizing the issue<\/a> ever since a truck driver who was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people<\/a> in August. <\/p>\n

California officials said they are working to make sure the federal Transportation Department is satisfied with the reforms they have put in place. The state had planned to resume issuing commercial driver\u2019s licenses in mid-December, but the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration blocked that.<\/p>\n

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\u201cCommercial drivers are an important part of our economy \u2014 our supply chains don\u2019t move, and our communities don\u2019t stay connected without them,\u201d said DMV Director Steve Gordon. <\/p>\n

The Sikh Coalition, a national group defending the civil rights of Sikhs, and the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the California drivers. They said immigrant truck drivers were being unfairly targeted<\/a>. The driver in the Florida crash and the driver in another fatal crash<\/a> in California in October are both Sikhs.<\/p>\n

Immigrants account for about 20% of all truck drivers, but these non-domiciled licenses immigrants can receive only represent about 5% of all commercial driver\u2019s licenses or about 200,000 drivers. The Transportation Department also proposed new restrictions<\/a> that would severely limit which noncitizens could get a license, but a court put the new rules on hold<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Mumeeth Kaur, the legal director of the Sikh Coalition, said this delay \u201cis an important step towards alleviating the immediate threat that these drivers are facing to their lives and livelihoods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duffy previously threatened to withhold millions of dollars in federal funding from California<\/a>, Pennsylvania<\/a> and Minnesota after audits found significant problems under the existing rules like commercial licenses being valid long after an immigrant truck driver\u2019s work permit expired. He dropped the threat to withhold $160 million from California after the state said it would revoke the licenses because the state was complying.<\/p>\n

Trucking trade groups have praised the effort to get unqualified drivers who shouldn\u2019t have licenses or can\u2019t speak English<\/a> off the road. They also applauded the Transportation Department\u2019s moves to go after questionable commercial driver\u2019s license schools<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A week after immigrant groups filed a lawsuit, California said Tuesday it will delay the revocations of 17,000…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4846,7125,387,7,9,8,555,553,18,14,1016,1015,33117,13,7121,50277,1967,17],"class_list":["post-114610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-accidents","tag-automotive-accidents","tag-business","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-general-news","tag-immigration","tag-lawsuits","tag-legal-proceedings","tag-local-news-for-apple","tag-politics","tag-sean-duffy","tag-steve-gordon","tag-transportation","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}