The Small Business Transportation Coalition (SBTC) filed a petition in federal court June 10 seeking to strip California and New York of their authority to issue commercial driver's licenses, pointing to a recent fatal bus crash in Virginia as evidence of a public safety crisis.
The SBTC June asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to order Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to immediately issue the decertification orders.
The legal filing follows a late-May crash in Virginia that killed five people, including a Massachusetts family with two children. According to the petition, the bus involved in the crash was operated by a driver licensed through the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles who allegedly did not speak English, a standard required by federal regulations for commercial motor vehicle drivers.
The Supreme Court in May denied Florida’s request to file a lawsuit against California and Washington over claims that the two states violated federal law by issuing commercial driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants who lack English proficiency.
That legal tussle stemmed from an Aug. 12, 2025, traffic fatality on the Florida Turnpike, where, according to court documents, a tractor-trailer driven by Harjinder Singh—an Indian national who entered the United States illegally through the Mexican border—made an illegal U-turn and caused a collision with a minivan. All three passengers in the minivan were killed, and Singh faces charges of vehicular homicide.
The SBTC argues in its petition that the Department of Transportation and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) are violating federal law by failing to revoke the states' licensing capabilities after both were officially found to be in "substantial noncompliance" with federal commercial driver's license (CDL) standards.
According to the court documents, a 2025 federal audit of CDL programs revealed that California had a noncompliance rate of roughly 25% regarding non-domicile permits and licenses. New York’s noncompliance rate exceeded 55%.
FMCSA in April issued a "Notice of Final Determination of Substantial Noncompliance" to New York. The SBTC contends that under federal law, specifically 49 U.S. Code § 31312, the Secretary of Transportation has no executive discretion once such a determination is made. The statute dictates that the secretary "shall" prohibit noncompliant states from issuing commercial licenses.
"Congress clearly intended the Secretary to issue decertification orders as the word 'shall' in the statute is a clear directive," the SBTC stated in its petition. "The finding of substantial non-compliance... necessarily triggers a duty to decertify by law."
The trade group also accused federal regulators of violating the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to acknowledge or respond to a separate petition for decertification filed more than a year ago, on May 27, 2025.
Additionally, the SBTC revealed it previously requested the U.S. Attorney General to launch criminal racketeering investigations into the motor vehicle departments of both California and New York. The group alleges the states are intentionally violating federal CDL program standards by issuing commercial licenses to undocumented immigrants while continuing to accept federal grant funding.
