The Attorneys General of 23 States have filed a friend of the court brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in support of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s final rule on non-domicile CDLs.

The rule being challenged is the FMCSA’s February 13, 2026, final rule limiting issuance of non-domicile CDLs to applicants with H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 visas. Asylum seekers, DACA recipients, refugees, and most other non-citizen categories are no longer eligible. Also, an Employment Authorization Document is no longer sufficient to obtain or renew a non-domiciled CDL. Approximately 8,000 CDLs coming up for renewal each month will not be renewable under the new rule.

The states’ brief asserted, “Recent estimates from White House officials suggest that up to a third of CDLs are held by illegal immigrants.” The brief then listed a series of fatal truck crashes caused by drivers who were not in the country legally and could not speak or read English sufficiently to observe road signs, but who nevertheless held CDLs issued by various state driver licensing agencies.

The states’ brief cited the FMCSA rule as an appropriate measure to protect the public from unsafe commercial motor vehicle drivers.

The brief noted that Florida recently moved to sue Washington and California in an original action in the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping to end those states’ lax enforcement of federal CDL requirements, but the Supreme Court denied the motion and the case was not heard.

The appeals court denied the petitioners’ request for a stay of the final rule while the case was pending. Oral argument on the merits of the legal challenge to FMCSA final rule will be heard in September 2026.