California must let immigrant truck drivers keep their licenses, judge rules

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

More than 20,000 immigrant truck drivers will be able to keep their licenses in California, at least temporarily, despite efforts by the Trump administration and the state of California to revoke them, according to a tentative ruling Wednesday in Alameda County Superior Court.

The decision puts the state of California in a bind. The U.S. Department of Transportation already has repeatedly pushed the California Department of Motor Vehicles to rescind these licenses, which belong to many asylum seekers and other immigrants with temporary legal status, after found alleged clerical issues regarding the expiration dates on their licenses. The California DMV complied with the transportation department’s demands and sent letters to more than 20,000 drivers last fall, telling them that their California licenses would expire in the next 60 days .

But after a law firm and two legal advocacy groups, the Asian Law Caucus and the Sikh Coalition,sued on behalf of truckers, saying that the state didn’t follow the proper process for rescinding their licenses, the state extended the expiration dates to March 6. The transportation department said in January that it will withhold $160 million in federal highway funds from California as punishment for extending the expiration dates.

While immigrant drivers in the courtroom celebrated today’s tentative decision, attorneys for the state of California said the judge’s ruling could hurt many more people. The Trump administration has threatened to rescind California’s ability to grant commercial licenses altogether if the state doesn’t comply with its orders regarding immigrant truckers.

Forcing the DMV to keep these 20,000 licenses intact “will risk the ultimate harm that California is trying to avoid,” said Barbara Horne-Petersdorf, an attorney with the California Department of Justice. “DMV is not insulated from any retaliatory action.” All told, about 700,000 drivers in California have commercial driving licenses, which are required to operate everything from big rigs to school buses.

Later this week, the judge will issue a final decision and the attorneys representing California will explain the process they will use to give the 20,000 truckers a chance to keep their licenses while also appeasing the federal government’s demands.

Even though the roughly 20,000 immigrant drivers will be able to keep their licenses in the short term, they have more limited long-term prospects. The transportation department created a rule in February preventing states from issuing or renewing licenses to certain immigrants, including many if not all of the 20,000 drivers affected by the judge’s tentative decision. Two major unions, the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Teachers, and a consumer law group, Public Citizen, are suing the federal government to stop that rule from taking effect next month.

The state of California is also suing the transportation department over its threats to withhold the $160 million in funding and to stop the state from issuing trucking licenses in the future.

Losing a trucking license — and $70,000

In September, Alejandro, a Bay Area truck driver and an asylum seeker from South America, received a notice from the California DMV telling him that his license was going to be revoked. CalMatters agreed to withhold his name because he said he’s worried about being harassed.

Over the past three years, he said he’s invested more than $70,000 in his trucking business, including purchasing his own truck and insurance for it. “If I can’t maintain my license to drive, I can’t continue operating my business,” he told CalMatters. The judge’s tentative decision today would allow him to hold on to his license through December, when his license was originally set to expire. He said he has a permit to work in the United States through 2030.

Many of the immigrant drivers are members of the Sikh community, a religious minority from India. The drivers sued the California DMV, saying that the state didn’t give them a fair chance to remedy the clerical problems on their licenses. The plaintiffs, who are unnamed in the lawsuit, include two school bus drivers and three commercial drivers. Many of their licenses were set to expire in 2027 or later.

The driver shortages are already affecting supply chains, said Gunveer Singh, a California-based broker who helps coordinate shipping across the state. He said the cost of a single freight trip from New Jersey to Texas has gone up by more than 35% because of a national shortage of immigrant drivers. “We just can’t find drivers,” he said. “It’s a whole thing.”