Public Citizen v. FMCSA (IV)

In a petition filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Public Citizen, along with Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the Truck Safety Coalition, and two individual truck drivers asked the court to review the final hours-of-service rule issued by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) in 2011. Like three previous rules issued by FMCSA in 2003, 2005, and 2008, the 2011 rule significantly increased the permissible number of hours that drivers could drive, both per shift and on a weekly basis.

In a decision issued in August 2013, the D.C. Circuit ultimately held that the rule reflected a permissible balancing of relevant factors by FMCSA and upheld it against challenges both by the safety group and industry, which claimed that the restrictions were too stringent.

Information about our successful litigation over prior versions of FMCSA’s hours-of-service rule are here, here, and here.