

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an attempt by Florida to sue the states of California and Washington over alleged violations of restrictions on commercial driver licenses for immigrant truckers.
According to the Associated Press, Florida had claimed that the two states had openly defied immigration laws by issuing CDLs to truckers who had entered the country illegally. The state filed its lawsuit in response to an August 2025 crash that killed three people on the Florida Turnpike, where an Indian truck driver was said to have made an illegal U-turn. The driver is currently facing charges for criminally negligent homicide, and has been accused of coming in the U.S. illegally in 2022. Separately, the Trump administration had also previously threatened in August 2025 to withhold federal funds from Washington and California, citing claims that the states had flouted newly enacted language proficiency requirements for truck drivers.
The lawsuit was widely considered to be a long shot on Florida's part, given that the Supreme Court primarily rules on appeals from lower courts, and rarely takes on standalone lawsuits between states. In dissenting opinions, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said that they would have chosen to hear Florida's case, given their assertion that the state had nowhere else to bring its lawsuit.
The Trump administration has sought to crack down on immigrant truck drivers in several ways over the last year. In June of 2025, the U.S. Department of Transportation directed states to take truckers off the job if they couldn't demonstrate English language proficiency during routine traffic stops and safety inspections. Then in March 2026, the DOT tightened CDL requirements for truckers without U.S. citizenship or permanent residency, effectively disqualifying asylum seekers and DACA recipients from acquiring or renewing their licenses. According to The Guardian, those restrictions have put nearly 200,000 of the country's truck drivers at risk of losing their CDLs.
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