Immigrant truckers have sued the California Department of Motor Vehicles for rescinding the commercial driver's licenses of thousands of drivers, alleging the decision violated their rights and threatened their livelihoods.
The California DMV gave a 60-day cancellation notice to 17,000 drivers on Nov. 6 after a federal audit found that licenses issued to immigrant drivers would expire after the time they were legally allowed to remain in the U.S.
In the event of such administrative errors by the DMV, the lawsuit alleges, California law requires the DMV to change the expiration of its own volition or allow applicants to reapply for a corrected license.
“The state of California must help these 20,000 drivers because, at the end of the day, the administrative errors that threaten their livelihoods are the fault of the CA-DMV itself,” said Munmeeth Kaur, legal director of the Sikh Coalition, a group that fights for Sikh civil rights.
The Sikh Coalition and Asian Law Caucus filed the class action lawsuit on behalf of five commercial driver's license holders, challenging the DMV's decision to revoke the licenses.
Since November, the number of cancellation notifications has increased grown to more than 20,000.
“If the court does not issue a stay, we will see a devastating wave of unemployment that will harm individual families, as well as the destabilization of the supply chains on which we all depend,” Kaur said.
The Sikh Coalition also noted that the action was taken under pressure from the federal government. He said the California DMV has not provided any recourse and informed applicants that it is not issuing or renewing commercial driver's licenses to nonresidents.
Punjabi Sikh truckers have become a mainstay of the American trucking industry. For years, many have sought asylum in the United States and entered the transportation industry.
There are about 750,000 Punjabi Sikhs in the United States. Of those, about 150,000 work in the trucking industry, with the majority residing on the West Coast.
The issue of migrant truckers became a point of political tension earlier this year, when a Punjabi Sikh driver made an illegal U-turn on a toll road that caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. The Trump administration swung into action and found seven states, including California, Washington and Texas, which had lax licensing rules.
The crackdown has sparked a wave of racism and racial discrimination against Sikh truck drivers, many of whom wear turbans and beards as symbols of their faith, which is neither Hindu nor Muslim.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy singled out California for issuing commercial driver's licenses to what his department says are unskilled immigrant truckers who endanger lives on the roads. Many truck drivers left the industry after the introduction of enhanced English proficiency tests, where highway inspectors check language proficiency and proficiency at road traffic signs.
Policy changes regarding noncitizen commercial licenses and English language proficiency enforcement could remove more than 400,000 commercial drivers from the market over the next three years, according to JB Hunt, one of the largest trucking companies.
