Supreme Court declines to hear challenge to ELD mandate

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a trucking group's petition to overturn the federal government's mandate that virtually all trucks built after the year 2000 be equipped with electronic logging devices (ELDs) to replace the traditional paper logs.

The high court, without comment, declined the petition filed by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA). OOIDA had claimed the mandate violates Fourth Amendment rights by failing to establish a regulatory structure at the federal and state level that serves as a constitutionally adequate substitute for a warrant.

OOIDA had petitioned the court after a lower court had upheld the ELD mandate.

In comments posted in Land Line, OOIDA's magazine, Jim Johnston, the group's president, vowed to press its case before Congress and the Trump administration. Johnston said there are "still many questions about the technical specifications and enforcement aspects of the mandate." Johnston said the government should delay its implementation until a number of those questions—which he did not specify—are answered.

OOIDA said it would lobby the Administration to either delay or repeal the mandate as part of the White House's objective of reducing undue regulatory burdens on industry. One problem, it noted, is that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the sub-agency of the Department of Transportation that wrote the rules, does not yet have an administrator, which is a political appointment. The chances of regulatory reform would increase once an administrator is appointed and confirmed, OOIDA said.