Even though a court order has put on hold the federal emergency rule published last fall to restrict non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration continues a crackdown on an increasing number of states it says have been issuing these CDLs improperly.

In fact, the transportation attorneys at Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary in a January 8 Law Alert said FMCSA has now issued preliminary determination of non-compliance letters to 18 states – and the DOT added a 19^th in an announcement later in the day.

Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy on January 8 announced that 54% of North Carolina’s non-domiciled CDLs reviewed by the FMCSA were issued illegally.

It’s a continuation of FMCSA’s ongoing nationwide audit of the state’s truck licensing systems. If North Carolina does not revoke all illegally issued licenses, the DOT will withhold nearly $50 million in federal funding, Duffy said.

What States Are Doing About Non-Domiciled CDLs

The Scopelitis alert said it’s likely that FMCSA will tell any state in substantial non-compliance to cancel non-compliant licenses.

“States have taken varying approaches to the timing of cancelling the licenses,” Scopelitis said. “For example, Texas has issued cancellations effective immediately.”

California, on the other hand, has been sending out 60-day license cancellation notices. Facing a lawsuit charging that the state should fix paperwork mistakes — like wrong expiration dates — instead of canceling licenses, the state told drivers their licenses would be extended through March 6.

FMCSA said California doesn’t have the authority to extend those deadlines and threatened to withhold about $160 million in highway funding in fiscal year 2027.

What Should Trucking Companies Do?

Scopelitis advised carriers to determine whether they currently use non-domiciled drivers. If so, they should review the drivers' licensing status immediately to make sure that their licenses have not been cancelled by the state. 

"States have targeted, among other things, licenses with expiration dates longer than one year and Canadian and Mexican drivers who were not eligible for non-domiciled licenses," said the law firm.

North Carolina Latest FMCSA Target

In a letter to North Carolina Governor Josh Stein and North Carolina Department of Public Safety Commissioner Paul Tine, FMCSA outlined the audit’s findings of how the state illegally issued non-domiciled CDLs to:

• Drivers whose licenses were valid long after their lawful presence in the U.S. expired.

• Drivers who were ineligible to hold a non-domiciled commercial CDL.

• Drivers without North Carolina first verifying the individual’s lawful presence in the U.S. 

For North Carolina to prevent federal funding from being withheld, the Department outlined the following corrective actions:

• Immediately pause issuance of non-domiciled CDLs.

• Identify all unexpired non-domiciled CDLs that fail to comply with FMCSA regulations.

• Revoke and reissue all noncompliant non-domiciled CDLs if they comply with the federal requirements.

• Conduct a comprehensive internal audit to identify all procedural and programming errors, training and quality assurance problems, insufficient policies and practices, and other issues that have resulted in the issuance of non-domiciled CDLs that did not meet Federal rules.