Takeaway: This ruling reinforces the importance of uniformity in regulating commercial motor vehicle safety. The court, applying the “arbitrary and capricious” standard of review, held that the federal agency had reasonably found California’s rules placed an unreasonable burden on interstate commerce, causing increased costs, reduced flexibility, and scheduling disruptions. In light of the high priority placed on facilitating interstate commerce, other courts may also be likely to apply this deferential standard of review when reviewing pre-emption of state meal and rest break rules.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, finding that California’s meal and rest break (MRB) rules impose a significant operational burden on operators of buses and other passenger-carrying commercial motor vehicles, again upheld the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA’s) determination that federal law pre-empts the state rules.
The Motor Carrier Safety Act requires the transportation secretary to review state laws and regulations on commercial motor vehicle safety and gives the secretary power to pre-empt state law.
Under federal hours-of-service (HOS) regulations, a passenger-carrying commercial motor vehicle driver may not drive more than 10 consecutive hours or be on duty for more than 15 consecutive hours. Once a driver reaches the 10- or 15-hour limit, they must spend eight consecutive hours entirely relieved of duty before they may drive again. Unlike drivers of property-carrying commercial motor vehicles, drivers of passenger-carrying commercial motor vehicles are not required to take a 30-minute break from driving during the first eight hours of driving time in order to continue driving beyond eight hours.
California’s MRB rules, contained in wage orders issued by the state’s Industrial Welfare Commission, apply to “all persons employed in the transportation industry,” including drivers of passenger-carrying commercial motor vehicles.
Wage Order 9-2001 states that an employee working more than five hours a day is entitled to a meal period of not less than 30 minutes. If the driver will not be working more than six hours during a work shift, the meal break may be waived by mutual consent of the employer and the employee. If the work period exceeds 10 hours, the employee is entitled to a second 30-minute meal break. This second meal break may be waived by mutual consent only if the employee does not work more than 12 hours in a day and does not waive the first meal period.
A group of motor carriers petitioned the FMCSA to review and pre-empt California’s MRB rules in 2008. The FMCSA denied the petition, finding that the state rules, as laws of general applicability, were not regulations on commercial motor vehicle safety subject to pre-emption. However, when petitioned again in 2018, the agency reconsidered its position on property-carrying commercial vehicles and determined that California's MRB regulations on commercial motor vehicle safety were subject to review because they imposed the same types of restrictions on driver duty and driving times as the federal HOS regulations.
Further, they were “additional to or more stringent than” the federal regulations, the FMCSA said. “Applying the required statutory test, the FMCSA determined that California's MRB rules did not provide any measurable safety benefit, were incompatible with federal regulations, and imposed an unreasonable burden on interstate commerce.” The agency then pre-empted California’s rules as applied to drivers of property-carrying commercial motor vehicles subject to federal HOS regulations.
Consistent with this determination, in 2020 the FMCSA determined that California’s MRB rules also were pre-empted as applied to drivers of commercial motor vehicles carrying passengers. The agency explained that the state’s rules resulted in unsafe conditions as drivers often had difficulty finding safe parking locations for meal breaks; were incompatible with federal HOS regulations because they required more off-duty rest periods at more frequent intervals; and imposed an unreasonable burden on interstate commerce because their requirement for off-duty breaks created operational difficulties and, in conjunction with 20 other states’ break rules, created a “patchwork of requirements” for interstate operators.
California officials petitioned for review of the FMCSA’s pre-emption determination.
Taking up the petition, the 9th Circuit noted it had denied petitions for review of the FMCSA’s 2018 determination regarding property-carrying vehicles in its 2021 decision in International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. FMCSA. In Teamsters, the 9th Circuit held that the FMCSA had not acted arbitrarily or capriciously in determining that California’s MRB rules were more stringent than the federal regulations or in finding that enforcement of the state rules would cause an unreasonable burden on interstate commerce.
In Teamsters, the court reminded petitioners, it had held that the FMCSA “could reasonably conclude that a state law disrupts regulatory uniformity even when the law was not specifically directed at commercial [motor vehicle] safety because a broader state law could still cover the same subject matter as FMCSA regulations.”
Responding to petitioners’ argument that California’s break rules for drivers of passenger-carrying vehicles could not be pre-empted because FMCSA has not promulgated such regulations, the court said the petitioners read Teamsters too narrowly.
“Although it is true that federal HOS regulations do not require that drivers of passenger-carrying commercial motor vehicles take a mid-shift break, they still dictate how long a driver may remain on duty before a mandatory off-duty period,” the court noted, stressing that the state and federal regulations “share the same purpose of mandating off-duty periods” to ensure commercial motor vehicle safety through fatigue management. The fact that California’s rules are a more stringent means of achieving this end “does not mean that its rules are outside of the FMCSA’s domain,” the court said.
Numerous public comments in the administrative record support the agency’s conclusion that the state’s rules impose a significant operational burden upon operators of passenger-carrying commercial motor vehicles, the court said. The FMCSA “permissibly agreed that the costs of complying with the MRB rules are ‘staggering,’ because requiring additional driving time and/or drivers would change the fundamental nature of bus service. Buses would no longer offer the most affordable source of intercity passenger transportation.”
Dismissing petitioners’ argument that a different burden analysis should be applied here than in Teamsters, the court reiterated that the federal regulations concerning work periods for drivers of passenger-carrying commercial motor vehicles govern the same subject area as California's MRB rules. “The FMCSA took account of the ‘costs and benefits’ of California's MRB rules and concluded that the ‘federal regulations adequately and more appropriately balanced the competing interests between safety and economic burden,’ ” the court concluded, denying the petition for review.
People of the State of Calif. v. FMCSA, 9th Cir., No. 20-70706 (June 4, 2026).
Rosemarie Lally, J.D., is a freelance legal writer based in Washington, D.C.
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