A federal judge has temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Transportation from obtaining a nationwide commercial-driver database that includes Vermont records, preserving the current limits on access while a multistate privacy lawsuit proceeds.
Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark said Friday that the preliminary injunction bars the federal government from compelling production of data held in the Commercial Driver’s License Information System, or CDLIS. The ruling also prevents officials from terminating more than $10 million in federal support for the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators if the association refuses to turn over the database.
The order is not a final judgment on the legality of the demand. It keeps the records and funding in place while the court considers the states’ claims, meaning the underlying dispute over federal access, driver privacy and control of state-supplied records remains unresolved.
Vermont joined the case with 20 other states and the District of Columbia in August, when the coalition filed a 55-page complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The complaint says the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration demanded roughly 17 million driver records on Aug. 11 and threatened to end AAMVA’s federal contracts and funding if the organization did not comply by Aug. 17.
According to the complaint, CDLIS is a state-fed clearinghouse used to confirm that a commercial driver has only one license and to identify disqualifying or unsafe driving histories across state lines. The states allege that records in the system can include names, addresses, dates of birth, driver-license numbers and Social Security numbers. They argue that the federal demand exceeded statutory authority and conflicted with the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The federal agencies have not conceded those claims. Because the litigation is active, the states’ allegations should not be read as established findings beyond the court’s decision to preserve the status quo at this stage.
The court first issued a shorter temporary restraining order in August. Clark’s office said at the time that the two-week order prevented disclosure and protected federal support while the parties briefed a longer injunction. The newly issued preliminary injunction extends that protection for the duration of the case unless a higher court changes it.
For Vermont commercial drivers, the immediate practical effect is continuity: the state can keep using the interstate system for licensing and safety checks, and the disputed bulk transfer remains blocked. A parallel statement from Virginia’s attorney general, another plaintiff, confirms that the injunction covers both the records demand and the threatened funding cutoff.
The next consequential step will be litigation on the merits, including whether the federal agencies had lawful authority to seek the database and whether the privacy statutes permit the requested use. Until then, the injunction protects the existing state-controlled arrangement but does not settle the case.
