A new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announcement says the agency will begin accepting petitions for waivers to preempt meal and rest break rules for truck drivers in California and Washington. In 2018 and again in 2020, the FMCSA ruled that federal law preempted California laws on meal and rest breaks.
Currently, California law mandates a half-hour meal break after more than five hours of work and a second half-hour meal break for workers who log more than ten hours. In addition, workers should get a 10-minute rest break for every four hours of work.
In Washington, workers are entitled to a meal period of at least 30 minutes that starts after the second hour and before the fifth hour after the shift begins. Similar to California, Washington rules also provide for a 10-minute rest period for every four hours worked and must occur no later than the end of the third working hour.
The federal equivalent only requires that except for some short haul drivers, a driver working more than eight hours must take at least one 30-minute break during the first eight hours, although the driver has flexibility as to when that break occurs.
FMCSA requires that waiver requests provide the following information:
- Whether and to what extent enforcement of a state’s meal and rest break laws with respect to intrastate CMV drivers has impacted the health and safety of drivers.
- Whether enforcement of state meal and rest break laws as applied to interstate CMV drivers will exacerbate the existing truck parking shortages and result in more trucks parking on the side of the road, whether any such effect will burden interstate commerce or create additional dangers to drivers and the public, and whether the applicant intends to take any actions to mitigate or address any such effect.
- Whether enforcement of a state’s meal and rest break laws as applied to interstate CMV drivers will dissuade carriers from operating in that state, whether any such effect will weaken the resiliency of the national supply chain, and whether the applicant intends to take any actions to mitigate or address any such effect.
FMCSA requires that any petitions for waiver of the preemption determinations be submitted by Nov. 13. The agency said it will publish any petitions for waiver that it receives and will provide an opportunity for public comment on those petitions.
In January 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously agreed with FMCSA’s December 2018 ruling that California meal and rest break laws are preempted by federal law, as applied to drivers involved in interstate commerce and subject to federal regulation in the case of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, et al. v. FMCSA.
The 2018 preemption was the result of petitions filed by the American Trucking Associations and the Specialized Carriers and Rigging Association. In a statement on the recent decision by the FMCSA ATA President Chris Spear said, “Congress first addressed this issue decades ago by passing F4A, and the U.S. DOT’s authority to preempt state rules was unanimously reaffirmed in a 2021 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.”
He concluded, “Federal law already mandates rest breaks for drivers. Unnecessary and duplicative state laws are not grounded in safety and have been primarily enforced via private lawsuits designed to extort the trucking industry.”
