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 the federal government 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.
"It would have a devastating impact, not only on the individuals like you mentioned but their livelihoods because having a commercial license is a requirement of their jobs, but also it would impact their families, the communities that they serve, as well as the larger state and if not the country, because they're providing essential services," said Katherine Zhao, an attorney with Asian Law Caucus, at the court hearing Wednesday.
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.
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.
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."
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