WASHINGTON — James Lamb, executive director of the Small Business in Transportation Coalition (SBTC) sent an open letter via e-mail to U.S. Department of Transportation Officials (USDOT) on Thursday, Jan. 2, regarding the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and its “lack of legal authority to impose speed limiters.”
The letter was sent in a proactive attempt to avoid 2025 SBTC v. FMCSA litigation on Unlawful Speed Limiter Rulemaking, according to SBTC. The litigation refers to a lawsuit filed by the SBTC against the FMCSA challenging the agency’s proposed rulemaking to mandate speed limiters on commercial trucks, arguing that the rule is unlawful and potentially harmful to small trucking businesses. If passed, vehicles over a certain weight will be legally required to have a device installed that will set a maximum speed which has yet to be determined.
In Lamb’s strongly worded letter, he asserted that the FMSCA lacks legal authority to impose speed limiters due to the fact that Congress repealed the NMSL in 1995, fully returning speed limit-setting authority to the individual states.
“We asked for you to respond in recent years citing your authority,” Lamb said. “You did not reply.”
Lamb also noted that the governing bodies should be aware of the 1995 ruling.
“We highly recommend you immediately withdraw this frivolous and futile RIN and abort this unlawful rulemaking,” Lamb said.
Lamb also pointed out that the FMCSA’s sister operating organization, the Federal Highway Association (FHA), admitted in 2017 that statutory speed limits are established by state legislatures for specific types of roads (e.g., Interstates, rural highways, urban streets) and can vary from state to state.
Lamb also cited the FHA’s own website, which says that the federal government does not set or enforce speed limits and that authority in this matter belongs to the state and local agencies that have jurisdiction over the road. (See highways.dot.gov/safety/speed-management/speed-limit-basics)
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and FMCSA’s joint speed limiter proposal was originally set for consideration in May 2024 and is now projected for publication in May 2025. The proposal has been a hot topic in the transportation industry since its inception.
“USDOT therefore does not have a legal leg to stand on here,” Lamb said. “We would prefer not to have to depose FHWA officials in a suit against the Secretary and would hope Mr. Duffy as incoming Secretary will direct FMCSA to stand down on this rulemaking. All of this would be brought up during discovery in a lawsuit through admissions and interrogatories and be an embarrassing public relations nightmare for the department.”
Lamb noted that in the interest of making a showing of a good faith effort to resolve the matter and not clog the courts and before the SBTC filed a TRO and temporary injunction grounded in a substantial likelihood of prevailing, he would prefer a discussion or that the groups should withdraw the rulemaking before the end of the month.
“Should you continue to ignore and/or refuse, we will, of course, advise the Court that we made every effort to work this out with you before being forced to unnecessarily litigate and jam the court’s docket to secure a declaratory judgment and injunction prohibiting this unlawful rulemaking from being promulgated,” Lamb said.
Lamb’s grounds for opposing the rule are that speed limiters are unsafe because they do not let a trucker speed up to avoid a fatality and they disrupt traffic when two trucks are side by side.
“But rather than argue these merits and show how this is bad public policy, we will simply argue you have no lawful authority to impose them to dispose of this public safety menace rule,” Lamb said. “Please advise Mr. (Laurence) Socci (of) your position and intentions at this time so that we may know how to proceed.”
On Friday morning, Socci, a member of the District of Columbia Bar; U.S. District Court Bar and D.C. Circuit Court Bar and who represents the SBTC, followed up Lamb’s letter via e-mail, asking to meet with Larry Minor, Associate Administrator for Policy at the FMCSA.
“… Mr. Minor, would you like to have a meeting with me, on behalf of SBTC to discuss FMCSA’s lack of authority to promulgate the speed limiters rule?” Socci asked in his e-mail. “This matter is very important to the SBTC and we would like to resolve it before we take it up with the incoming Congress.”
Dana Guthrie is an award-winning journalist who has been featured in multiple newspapers, books and magazines across the globe. She is currently based in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.
