New York Attorney General Letitia James , Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, and 20 other attorneys general as well as the state of Pennsylvania have won a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking the Trump administration from seizing millions of commercial drivers’ personal records or cutting off federal funds used by the states to maintain the database of holders of commercial driver licenses.
The temporary restraining order is the result of a lawsuit filed in federal court on August 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The Trump administration had threatened to cut off funding used by the states to maintain the commercial diver license records unless the states turned over data in files they use in the issuance of commercial driver licenses.
Federal Judge Anthony Trenga ruled, “The Plaintiff States have also made a clear showing of irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief. Courts have often found that the unauthorized disclosures of information provided to agencies, particularly those involving a large-scale disclosure of sensitive information, constitute irreparable harm.”
James said, “The federal government cannot arbitrarily seize Americans’ private information. (The judge’s) ruling puts a stop to this unlawful demand and protects millions of commercial drivers from this invasion of privacy. My office will continue to fight every attempt to weaponize federal funding against New York and its residents.”
The Trump administration demanded access to a nationwide database that is owned by the states and operated by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. The administration threatened to eliminate all federal funding for the system unless the records were turned over to it by Aug. 17.
“Since the purpose of a TRO is to prevent ‘imminent harm,’ and the Federal Defendants have clearly threatened to cut off federal funding, the standard for granting a TRO is readily satisfied,” Judge Trenga wrote. “The equities and the public interest also favor enjoining the Data Demand.”
James, Tong and the other plaintiffs argued that the government has no legal authority to seize states’ confidential driver records and is forcing states to choose between protecting drivers’ privacy and preserving the system they rely on to issue commercial driver licenses. The lawsuit asked the federal court to immediately block the administration’s demands and force it to keep funding the database system so it can continue operating.
The Commercial Driver’s License Information System (CDLIS) has been operating for 40 years. States use CDLIS to determine whether applicants already hold a CDL in another state or have been disqualified for unsafe driving, helping keep dangerous drivers off the road.
The lawsuit alleges that the administration’s unprecedented demands would transform CDLIS from a secure state-to-state information-sharing system into a federal database containing sensitive personal information that Congress never authorized the federal government to collect. The suit argues that the Trump administration’s demands violate the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, the Privacy Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
