A federal judge has paused a joint effort by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland Security to obtain roughly 17 million driver records from the Commercial Driver's License Information System.
U.S. District Court Judge Anthony J. Trenga issued an order stopping all parties from acting on the records demand while litigation proceeds. The dispute traces back to a pair of lawsuits filed August 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. In the first case, 21 states and the District of Columbia sued the DOT, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, agency leaders, and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. A second suit brought by 22 states and the District of Columbia targeted DHS over an identical request for the same data.
The order bars AAMVA from handing the requested records to any of the defendants or to any agency working in coordination with them. It also bars the federal agencies from retaliating against AAMVA or the plaintiff states over the demand, including terminating or threatening to terminate federal contracts or funding tied to the dispute.
The ruling arrives after a year in which the DOT has repeatedly threatened to withhold money from states over the handling of non-domiciled commercial driver licenses. Fleets operating across state lines have watched the enforcement posture closely, since driver qualification files and license verification sit at the center of both federal audits and carrier hiring practices.
Overdrive reported the order as part of its regulatory coverage for Monday, August 17, 2026. No date has been set for the next hearing in either case.
Source: Overdrive - https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15832665/federal-judge-halts-dots-cdl-records-demand