High Court to Hear ATA Bid to Overturn L.A. Port Plan

This story appears in the Jan. 21 print edition of Transport Topics.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal filed by American Trucking Associations in its 4-year-old bid to block the Port of Los Angeles from imposing several pollution-control requirements on truckers that ATA said are unrelated to improving air quality.

In a Jan. 11 notice, the high court granted ATA’s petition to review a September 2011 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. While the appeals court struck down the port’s attempt to ban owner-operators, it allowed the port to require drayage operators to submit off-street parking plans, properly maintain their trucks, post placards on their trucks and demonstrate financial responsibility as part of the port’s overall Clean Truck Program.

ATA filed an appeal to the Supreme Court in December 2011 challenging parts of the port’s requirements for truckers, saying the four provisions would lead to a patchwork of rules and regulations.

“We are pleased the Supreme Court will review the erroneous decision of the appellate court,” ATA President Bill Graves said in a statement last week.

Graves said that the requirements ATA is challenging “have nothing to do with improving air quality.”

“Under the Clean Truck Program, industry and the port have succeeded in working together to replace outdated equipment with new, efficient trucks,” Graves said. “We are proud to have participated in a program that improved air quality.”

As of Jan. 1, 2012, all trucks entering the port must meet 2007 Environmental Protection Agency engine emissions standards.

Geraldine Knatz, executive director of the port, said the Clean Truck Program has played a critical role in reducing harmful emissions by more than 90% from trucks operating at the facility.

“A key component of the Clean Truck Program is our concession agreement [which includes the disputed requirements], and we’re confident that its provisions up-held by the lower courts will be upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court,” Knatz said.

The court specifically has agreed to hear two of three issues raised by ATA in its appeal.

One issue centers on whether the appeals court erred by ruling that because the port was a business, the so-called “market participant” doctrine could be used to trump the federal preemption clause forbidding government entities from imposing restrictions on motor carriers that interfere with their “prices, routes or services.”

Rich Pianka, ATA’s deputy chief counsel, said the market participant doctrine “would have given states a back door to regulate the industry in ways that Congress clearly did not envision.”

The other issue the court agreed to review concerns whether the port can limit access to its property if drayage operators violate the concession agreement.

Regarding that issue, a port spokesman said the port has been enforcing the four requirements and already has suspended 35 drayage operators for violating the off-road parking plan provision of the agreement.

“With the exception of the employee-related requirements which were prohibited by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the concession provisions remain in effect, and the port has begun enforcement of them,” said the spokesman, Phillip Sanfield.

Melissa Lin Perrella, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental action group that has intervened in the case, said that it “continues to be a hard-fought battle against an industry clinging to its polluting practices.”

“The Clean Truck Program at the Port of L.A. has dramatically reduced harmful air pollution from port trucking, but it won’t stay that way unless trucking companies step up and shoulder the necessary costs of upkeep and care,” Perrella added.

The port unsuccessfully argued that, as a “market participant,” it has the power to require truckers to be employees rather than independent contractors. Although the appeals court rejected that notion, it did rule that the market participant doctrine gave the port authority to impose the four other requirements.

However, Pianka said there is no evidence to show that the clean trucks plan would “crumble” without the four requirements.

“We certainly supported the phase-out of older, more polluting trucks,” Pianka said, which is also part of the Clean Truck Program. “These other provisions, you can tell just by looking at them, aren’t about air quality.”

“The notion that they need every single provision or the whole edifice falls is ridiculous,” Pianka said. “It’s a smokescreen that they’re relying on.”

Pianka said it is “extremely rare” for the Supreme Court to accept a case for review.

In 2011, for example, 1,553 “paid cases” — those not coming from prisoners — were filed, but the court heard only 79 of them.

“We’re excited. We think it’s a big deal,” Pianka said, adding, “We’re pretty confident that we’re going to prevail.”

Pianka said he was hopeful that the court will schedule oral arguments by late April and issue a decision by the end of June.