\n\t\t\t\t\t\tA week after immigrant groups filed a lawsuit, California said Tuesday it will delay the revocations of 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses until March to allow more time to ensure that truckers and bus drivers who legally qualify for the licenses can keep them.California decided to revoke the licenses after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pressured the state to make sure immigrants who are in the country illegally aren’t granted the licenses. The Transportation Department has been prioritizing the issue 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 in August.(Watch previous coverage in the video player above.)Duffy didn’t immediately comment on the delay. California officials 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’s licenses in mid-December, but the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration blocked that.\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.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. The driver in the Florida crash and the driver in another fatal crash in California in October are both Sikhs.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 that would severely limit which noncitizens could get a license, but a court put the new rules on hold.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.\u201dDuffy threatened to withhold millions of dollars in federal funding from California, Pennsylvania 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.Trucking trade groups have praised the effort to get unqualified drivers who shouldn’t have licenses or can\u2019t speak English off the road. They also applauded the Transportation Department’s moves to go after questionable commercial driver\u2019s license schools.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
A week after immigrant groups filed a lawsuit<\/a>, California said Tuesday it will delay the revocations of 17,000<\/a> commercial driver’s 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 California decided to revoke the licenses after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pressured the state<\/a> to make sure immigrants who are in the country illegally aren’t granted the licenses. 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 (Watch previous coverage in the video player above.)<\/p>\n Duffy didn’t immediately comment on the delay. California officials 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’s licenses in mid-December, but the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration blocked that.<\/p>\n \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 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.<\/p>\n Trucking trade groups have praised the effort to get unqualified drivers who shouldn’t have licenses or can\u2019t speak English<\/a> off the road. They also applauded the Transportation Department’s moves to go after questionable commercial driver\u2019s license schools<\/a>.<\/p>\n See more coverage of top California stories here<\/a> | Download our app<\/a> | Subscribe to our morning newsletter<\/a> | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel<\/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":114666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61245,7,61244,9,8,8893,7200,8081,350,8832,7524,553,3982,57893,2872,1846,20094,2959,32627,61289,8485,7197,7199],"class_list":["post-114665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-bus-driver","tag-california","tag-california-delay","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-cdl","tag-commercial-driver","tag-commercial-drivers-licenses","tag-crash","tag-duffy","tag-federal-funding","tag-florida","tag-immigrant","tag-immigrant-truck-drivers","tag-immigrants","tag-lawsuit","tag-license","tag-march","tag-new-rule","tag-revoking-licenses","tag-sikhs","tag-transportation-department","tag-truck-driver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114665","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=114665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}