DOT pushes back in states’ lawsuit, saying CDL data needed for oversight

UPDATE: The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has granted the states’ emergency motion for a temporary restraining order. Check LandLine.media for updates.

Last week, nearly half the states filed lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Transportation and U.S. Department of Homeland Security over the alleged illegal seizure of truck drivers’ personal data.

Now, the administration is firing back.

As part of a memorandum in opposition filed on Aug. 17, the defendants’ attorneys asked the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to reject a motion that would block the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration from obtaining information needed to verify that states are following “rigorous safety standards” when issuing a CDL.

“Without access to CDL data, FMCSA is materially hindered in its statutory obligation to conduct oversight of states’ CDL issuance and prevent the regulatory CDL framework from fracturing into national dis-uniformity,” the defendants wrote in the memorandum.

The lawsuits center around Commercial Driver’s License Information System (CDLIS) records and whether the government is violating privacy laws.

The states claim that on June 25, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration sent a letter to AAMVA, demanding that it turn over records containing the name, date of birth, state of record, license number and Social Security number of every driver in the entire CDLIS database going back five years, comprising about 17 million records. According to the lawsuit, AAMVA responded on June 30 with several concerns, including that the contract between the two entities did not entitle FMCSA to “pointer records.”

The dispute continued with several exchanges, leading up to Aug. 11, when the states say that FMCSA “made an extraordinary and unprecedented threat” requiring AAMVA to turn over the database records by Aug. 17 or face immediate termination of all AAMVA’s federal contracts and funding. On the same day, DHS issued a subpoena to AAMVA for the same records.

Attorneys for the DOT said that FMCSA has every right to obtain that info.

“FMCSA contracts with AAMVA to maintain a consolidated, nationwide database of commercial-driver information,” the memorandum states. “Both the contract and the governing statute recognize that FMCSA has the right to obtain information from that database. Exercising that right, FMCSA has asked AAMVA to provide information about commercial drivers. Plaintiffs, a coalition of States and the District of Columbia, seek a temporary restraining order to block FMCSA from obtaining information it is lawfully entitled to. The Court should decline that invitation.”

Last week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called the states involved in the lawsuit “radical.”

“Every administration since 1988 has had access to this basic database, so let’s be clear on what this ridiculous lawsuit is really all about,” Duffy said. “These radical state AGs want to make it harder for my department to enforce the rules of the road and easier for dangerous illegal immigrant truck drivers to operate a big rig. They may not care about keeping you and your family safe, but President Trump and I do. We will fight this lawsuit tooth and nail to prevent more senseless crashes by unqualified drivers.”

Over the past year-and-a-half, the DOT has been focused on ensuring that only trained and vetted drivers receive a CDL. In April 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order regarding trucking. As part of the executive order, the DOT and FMCSA were required to “evaluate and take appropriate actions to improve the effectiveness of current protocols for verifying the authenticity and validity of both domestic and international commercial driving credentials.”

The states involved in both lawsuits are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. Minnesota is involved in the case against DHS. LL