Court Rebuffs Public Citizen on HOS Rule
A federal court has rejected a request by several advocacy groups, led by Public Citizen, seeking to overturn the interim hours-of-service rule issued by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration last month.
In an order issued late Wednesday, Judges Karen Henderson and Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied Public Citizen’s request to have the court “enforce” its ruling from July striking down the 11th hour of driving and the 34-hour restart.
The advocacy group had sought to have the court force FMCSA to reissue its interim rule without those two provisions, on the grounds the agency had not allowed for proper levels of notice and comment from the public before retaining the controversial pieces of the rule.
In December, the agency published the interim rule, which while adding additional support for the added driving time, retained the provisions.
An American Trucking Associations official said the trucking group was happy with the court’s ruling.
“We’re very pleased,” said Bob Digges, ATA’s deputy general counsel. He said the ruling “confirms” the arguments made by FMCSA and ATA that “the court only had procedural problems” with the original hours rule.
Bonnie Robin-Vergeer, an attorney with Public Citizen, said the group was “disappointed in the court’s ruling,” and Teamsters spokeswoman Leslie Miller said the union thought it was “tragic that the court is letting Transportation Secretary Mary Peters get away with continually ignoring the courts and Congress on matters of highway safety.”
FMCSA said in a statement that “the court denied a request by an interest group to stop FMCSA from implementing its interim final rule on hours of service . . . . Accordingly, the interim rule remains in effect. We are currently taking public comments on the rule, and look forward to reviewing them and issuing a final rule on this issue before the year is out."
FMCSA is continuing to solicit comments on the rule until Feb. 15.
