Indian Punjabi truckers sue California DMV for revoking their licenses

Immigrant truck drivers have sued the California Department of Motor Vehicles for terminating the commercial driver’s licenses of thousands of drivers, alleging that the decision violated their rights and threatened their livelihood.

California’s DMV gave a 60-day cancellation notice to 17,000 drivers on Nov. 6 after a federal audit found the licenses issued to immigrant drivers were set to expire after the time they were legally allowed to remain in the U.S.

In the event of such clerical errors by the DMV, the suit alleges, California law requires the DMV to change the expiration of its own accord or to allow applicants to reapply for a corrected license.

“The state of California must help these 20,000 drivers because, at the end of the day, the clerical errors threatening their livelihoods are of the CA-DMV’s own making,” said Munmeeth Kaur, legal director of the Sikh Coalition, a group fighting for the civil rights of Sikhs.

The Sikh Coalition and Asian Law Caucus filed the class-action lawsuit on behalf of five commercial driver’s license holders, challenging the DMV’s decision to revoke licenses.

Since November, the number of cancellation notifications has grown to more than 20,000.

“If the court does not issue a stay, we will see a devastating wave of unemployment that harms individual families, as well as the destabilization of supply chains on which we all rely,” said Kaur.

The Sikh Coalition also noted that the action was taken under pressure from the federal government. It said the California DMV has failed to provide recourse, and informed applicants that it’s not issuing or renewing non-resident commercial driver’s licenses.

Punjabi Sikh truckers have emerged as a pillar of the American trucking industry. For years, many have sought asylum in the U.S. and entered the transportation industry.

There are around 750,000 Punjabi Sikhs in the United States. Of those, about 150,000 work in the trucking industry, with the majority based on the West Coast.

The issue of immigrant truckers became a political flash point earlier this year, when a Punjabi Sikh driver took an illegal U-turn at a turnpike that caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. The Trump administration swung into action and found seven states, including California, Washington and Texas, that had lax licensing rules.

The crackdown has caused a wave of racism and racial profiling of Sikh truckers, many of whom sport turbans and beards as symbols of their faith, which is neither Hindu nor Muslim.

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy singled out California for issuing commercial driver’s licenses to what his department says are unqualified immigrant truckers that put lives on the road in danger. Many truckers quit the industry after the introduction of enhanced English proficiency tests, where highway inspectors check for language proficiency and highway traffic sign competency.

Policy changes regarding noncitizen commercial licenses and English-language proficiency enforcement could remove more than 400,000 commercial drivers from the market over the next three years, according to J.B. Hunt, one of the largest trucking companies.