Cybersecurity Policy Report, Federal Judge Blocks Administration’s Seizure of Driver’s License Database, (Aug 21, 2026)
The Trump administration’s plan to obtain personal data from a nationwide registry of commercial driver’s licenses for immigration enforcement was blocked yesterday by a federal court.
Judge Anthony Trenga of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) to prevent the departments of Transportation and Homeland Security from gaining access to the Commercial Driver’s License Information System (CDLIS) from the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA).
A coalition of 21 states and the District of Columbia sued DoT to block the transfer of data from the CDLIS, which receives federal funds but is controlled by state governments through the AAMVA.
Judge Trenga previously issued an administrative stay while he considered the case (CPR, Aug. 17). He scheduled a Sept. 10 hearing to hear arguments about whether the TRO should be upgraded to a preliminary injunction.
The CDLIS contains names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers of 17 million commercial drivers nationwide, and DoT has no “statutory mandate” to collect the data in bulk for immigration enforcement, the judge said. Despite the TRO, the data would still be available to the federal government, “as it has been, based on specific individualized requests,” he noted.
“The federal government cannot arbitrarily seize Americans’ private information. Today’s ruling puts a stop to this unlawful demand and protects millions of commercial drivers from this invasion of privacy,” New York Attorney General Letitia James (D.), one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a news release.
“Today’s ruling marks another important step in making sure Americans’ privacy rights remain protected and resolute,” California AG Rob Bonta (D.) said in a statement. “When the President forgets the rules of the road, we’ll be there to remind him.”
Administration officials had threatened to withhold funding for the CDLIS unless the AAMVA complied with their demand for the data, but the TRO bars the government “from taking any adverse actions against the Plaintiff States or the AAMVA” (State of Illinois, et al. v. United States Department of Transportation, et al., No. 1:26-cv-02547 (E.D. Va. Aug. 13, 2026)).
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