August 13, 2026
Gary White/USA Today via Reuters Connect
The Trump administration is being sued by multiple states, including New Jersey, for demanded 17 million commercial drivers records. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro also is a plaintiff.
Numerous states are seeking to block the Trump administration's subpoena for 17 million commercial driver records.
The lawsuit claims the government has violated several federal and state privacy laws in its demand for the data. Filed in federal court Thursday, the litigation argues the White House is proceeding in "bad faith" and without "any legitimate statutory purpose" after attempting to seize similar data through voter rolls, Medicaid and welfare programs.
MORE: Olney home under federal investigation is also now tied to deaths of two women, police say
The lawsuit was filed by a coalition of 21 attorneys general, including New Jersey's Matthew Platkin, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
The case concerns the Commercial Driver's License Information System, a database established in 1986 to share CDL information among states. It was designed to prevent commercial drivers with numerous traffic violations from applying for a new license in a different region; whenever a state receives a new CDL application, it cross-references the person in the system before issuing a license.
The database generally stores each driver's full name, date of birth, Social Security number, driver's license number and the state that issued it. In late June, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration wrote the nonprofit that oversees the database with an "unprecedented demand" for this information. It wanted the identifying details of every driver in the system over the past five years, the lawsuit says. FMCSA, an agency within the Department of Transportation, had "never before demanded any portion of the CDLIS database, much less the entire corpus of data," the suit says.
The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, the nonprofit in charge of the database, pressed FMSCA for "the specific intended use of the information," since multiple privacy laws limit its disclosure. The lawsuit claims FMSCA said the purpose of its demand was "to fulfill its federal safety and regulatory obligations" and told AAMVA in a July 23 meeting that it would terminate the nonprofit's federal grants if it did not provide the data by the following day.
Though AAMVA pushed for a later deadline and informed the states of the Trump administration's demands, the Department of Homeland Security served a subpoena requesting the same data for "immigration enforcement." According to the lawsuit, FMSCA later disclosed that it had coordinated its demands with DHS.
The federal government had set a deadline of Aug. 17, upon which AAMVA must furnish the records or face penalties like "canceling AAMVA's grants" and "filing an enforcement action to enforce the subpoena." Though the nonprofit initially agreed to the terms, it has since said it cannot provide the information by that date.
The plaintiffs involved in the suit argue that losing the grants would essentially shutter the database, halting the processing of any new commercial driver's licenses and impacting local economies. Complying with the government's demand, however, would "create a brand-new database controlled by the federal government" that states "would have no access to, or control over ... and so would lose the ability to superintend, secure and verify their records."
"That disclosure would breach the confidentiality of millions of individuals by divulging personal information that Plaintiff States promised to keep private, subject to narrow exceptions, damaging public trust in the States and foreseeably deterring many people from applying for CDLs, which would deprive the States of revenue and potentially cause some to attempt to drive without valid licenses," the lawsuit says.
In the litigation, the coalition says the government has violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, the Privacy Act of 1974 and numerous state contracts with AAMVA. It has asked a judge to block the subpoena, declare it illegal and prevent the government from canceling federal grants based on the data demand.
Follow Kristin & PhillyVoice on Twitter: @kristin_hunt
| @thePhillyVoice
Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice
Have a news tip? Let us know.
