A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that a trucking reregulation program implemented last year by the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles “likely” violates federal law.
The three-member panel ruled in favor of the American Trucking Associations and blasted a lower district court denial last year of an injunction sought by the trucking group against the truck program.
The decision now sends the injunction case back to the lower court with a sharply worded interpretation by the appellate panel as to where the lower court erred in denying the stay.
The truck plan is a key component of an omnibus environmental package called the Clean Air Action Plan adopted by the ports jointly in 2006 and seeks to cut ports-generated pollution through various programs addressing ships, trucks, rail and diesel-powered yard equipment. The combined ports have been cited as the largest single-point generator of diesel pollution in the Los Angeles basin, though the overwhelming majority of pollutants are attributable to the thousands of ocean-going vessels that arrive at the ports each year.
If enjoined, and found to violate federal law as the Ninth Circuit determined was likely, the truck plan would have to be seriously revamped or redacted, reducing the overall pollution reductions originally sought by the ports in addressing the trucks.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling that the truck program devised by the two adjacent ports “is likely to result in at least some irreparable harm to the motor carriers, and, on balance, the district court abused its discretion when it denied a preliminary injunction as to significant parts of the agreements.”
The ATA, while reiterating that it was not opposed to such parts of the truck program as the retirement of older more polluting trucks, said that it was “happy” with the Ninth Circuit decision.
“The Port will continue to study the decision and appropriate next steps of the Court of Appeals, and anticipates that further proceedings will be held promptly before the District Court,” said Port of Long Beach Executive Director Richard Steinke in a brief statement issued Friday.
Officials at the Port of Los Angeles also said they would release a statement sometime Friday.
The truck program, which began implementation on Oct. 1, 2008, seeks to cut ports-generated pollution by replacing more than 19,000 older model trucks providing short-haul service, or drayage, to the ports’ marine terminals. Using loans and grants to trucking firms, the truck program hopes to upgrade the entire drayage fleet to less emissive 2007 or newer model year trucks within five years.
A key component of the truck program was the implementation of a concession system that required trucking firms to obtain access licenses from the ports after agreeing to ports-defined criteria. While the overall truck plan was jointly developed by the two ports, each eventually adopted slightly differing language and criteria regarding the program, but essentially maintained a common financing component.
The Port of Los Angeles access license criteria forced trucking firms to agree to a phased-in schedule for moving to an per-hour employee only workforce as opposed to the independent per-load driver workforce that currently make up more than 80 percent of the drayage workers.
The ATA, the U.S. Department of Justice, and several other industry trade groups asked the Ninth Circuit late last year to overturn the lower court rejection of an injunction against portions of the truck program, including the access license agreements. The groups argued that the truck program, which started on Oct. 1, violated federal interstate commerce laws.
The ATA, which represents more than 37,000 tucking firms throughout the nation, argued to the Ninth Circuit that the lower court judge based her September, 2008 decisions on “errors of law” and committed “reversible error” in ruling that the ATA “failed to demonstrate a probability of success on the merits” of the filing.
The ports maintained to both courts that the truck program’s goal of modernizing the local drayage fleet of trucks was necessary for safety, security and environmental reasons.
The lower court, while finding in favor of the ATA on many counts of the injunction request, denied the injunction based primarily on a security exemption to federal preemption cited by the ports. In a first step request at the Ninth Circuit late last year, the appellate panel denied an ATA request for an emergency injunction against portions of the truck program and held a full hearing on the lower court ruling earlier this year.
In Friday’s ruling, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the ATA arguments, calling the access license agreement portion of the truck program a hodgepodge of attempted regulations,.
“It is not enough to say that the [truck program] might enhance efficiency, or reduce some kind of negative health effects. The narrow question, again, is whether the [truck program] is intended to be, and is, genuinely responsive to motor vehicle safety,” wrote the Ninth Circuit.
“It is rather clear that some, indeed many, of the provisions of the [access license] agreements are not likely to live in the light cast by that strobe.
The appellate panel also slammed the employee-only portion of the access license agreements, which the ports argued were required for safety reasons.
“We see little safety-related merit in those threadpaper arguments, which denigrate small businesses and insist that individuals should work for large employers or not at all,” wrote the panel, adding that it was likely that the ports would fail in supporting this argument if argued in a full court session.
While the ruling blasted parts of the lower court ruling, the appellate panel did offer praise to and agreed with the lower court findings that ruled in favor of the ATA, including that ports are not on “sovereign” lands and thus exempt from interstate commerce regulation.
The case now moves back to the lower district court for a rehearing of the preliminary injunction arguments from all sides, albeit with the Ninth Circuit interpretation of how the lower court should have originally ruled.
While the Ninth Circuit case does not immediately block the truck plan, the lower court was ordered to speedily schedule and rehear the trucking industry injunction case. The lower court judge handling the case has in similar situation in the past reheard remanded cases within several weeks of an appellate decision.