{"id":359944,"date":"2026-09-29T17:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T17:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/359944\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T17:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T17:42:09","slug":"new-york-takes-turn-in-cdl-court-case-with-fmcsa-land-line-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/359944\/","title":{"rendered":"New York takes turn in CDL court case with FMCSA \u00bb Land Line Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration\u2019s audit of non-domiciled CDLs found that 30 states were issuing licenses for a time that surpassed the expiration date of the applicant\u2019s work authorization in the U.S.<\/p>\n

FMCSA said that only two states \u2013 California and New York \u2013 failed to cooperate, leading to the decision to withhold federal funding from each state. The agency withheld about $160 million from California and about $73 million from New York.<\/p>\n

Both states have appealed the agency\u2019s ruling in federal court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard California\u2019s case on Sept. 11<\/a>, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard New York\u2019s case on Monday, Sept. 28.<\/p>\n

Anthony Raduazo, an attorney representing the state of New York, told a panel of judges that FMCSA held substantial funds without any explicit requirement for the states\u2019 CDL expirations to match work authorization expirations.<\/p>\n

\u201cFederal respondents have found the state of New York in substantial non-compliance for the first time in the 40-year history of the state\u2019s commercial driver\u2019s license program,\u201d Raduazo said. \u201cThat determination is based solely on a purported failure to comply with an expiration rule for non-citizens that doesn\u2019t exist in any federal statute or regulation, is not memorialized in any guidance documents and has never been enforced by the federal respondents. That determination is arbitrary, capricious and contrary to law.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the judges asked if a requirement in a regulation can be implied, or if it has to be explicitly expressed. <\/p>\n

In a situation where an agency is withholding funds from a state, Raduazo said the requirement needs to be clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf FMCSA wanted to condition the receipt of federal funds on this type of requirement, they needed to do that expressly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Simon Jerome, the attorney representing the U.S. Department of Transportation, pointed to the regulation\u2019s use of the word \u201cunexpired.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jerome said that the context of the regulation and the use of \u201cunexpired\u201d implies that lawful presence should last for the duration of the CDL being issued.<\/p>\n

Later on, Jerome noted that the funding was withheld from New York and California because they failed to resolve the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis issue of expiration date non-compliance was rampant and no other states have reached the point of final determinations,\u201d Jerome said. \u201cMany of those states across the country worked with the agency to address the agency\u2019s concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Failed to revoke\u2019<\/p>\n

In April, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that FMCSA was withholding about $73 million in highway funding for failing to revoke \u201cillegally issued\u201d non-domiciled CDLs.<\/a><\/p>\n

According to an FMCSA audit, the New York Department of Transportation had been routinely issuing CDLs to foreign drivers in violation of federal law. The federal audit revealed a 53% failure rate in the sampled records.<\/p>\n

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul quickly pushed back, saying that the federal cuts were nothing more than \u201cpolitical payback.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next?<\/p>\n

The three-judge panel will review the arguments before deciding. Following oral arguments, it typically takes months for an appeals court to issue a ruling. Around the same time, the D.C. Circuit should issue a ruling in the case involving California. LL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration\u2019s audit of non-domiciled CDLs found that 30 states were issuing licenses for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-359944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}