Decided: May 14, 2026 | 9-0
The Case: How It Got Here
The story begins on an Illinois highway in 2017. Shawn Montgomery, a truck driver, had pulled his rig onto the shoulder when a Mack truck operated by Yosniel Varela-Mojena, driving for Caribe Transport II, drifted off the road and slammed into him. Montgomery survived, but the injuries were catastrophic — he would later lose part of a leg and live with chronic pain.
The broker that hired Caribe Transport was C.H. Robinson. Caribe Transport had a remarkably poor safety record at the time it was engaged. Montgomery sued not just Caribe, but also C.H. Robinson under a theory of negligent hiring — arguing that the broker bore responsibility for selecting a dangerous carrier.
C.H. Robinson’s argument at the district court level was that it was protected from being held negligent in its hiring of Caribe by the safety exception of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (F4A) of 1994, given that the exception applies to action “with respect to motor vehicles,” and a brokerage can’t be considered that. That argument was initially rejected at the district level, but on appeal, the Seventh Circuit, citing its own precedent in Ye v. GlobalTranz, disagreed and removed C.H. Robinson as a defendant, citing F4A.
The case then wended its way to the Supreme Court amid a widening split between federal circuits — some protecting brokers, others exposing them — creating inconsistent liability exposure depending on where a shipment originated or where a lawsuit was filed.
The Legal Framework: What the F4A Actually Says
To understand why this case mattered, you need to understand two provisions of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994:
The Preemption Clause (§14501(c)(1)): Prevents states from enacting or enforcing laws “related to a price, route, or service” of a motor carrier or broker “with respect to the transportation of property.” This is the broad federal shield the brokerage industry had relied upon.
The Safety Exception (§14501(c)(2)(A)): Carves back out state authority, preserving “the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles.” This is the five-word phrase at the heart of the entire dispute: “with respect to motor vehicles.”
All circuit courts agreed that broker liability falls within F4A’s preemptive scope. The question was whether the safety exception brought it back in.
The industry divide was stark. Under the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits’ holdings, a broker who knowingly selects a dangerous motor carrier or driver is immune from civil liability — no matter how dangerous the carrier or driver, and no matter if the broker had actual knowledge of the danger. In contrast, the Sixth Circuit, in Cox v. TQL, had ruled the opposite way, finding that the safety exception “focuses on the connection between the state law and motor vehicles, and not necessarily on the connection between the regulated entity and motor vehicles.”
The Decision: Barrett’s Eight-Page Earthquake
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion. Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed a concurrence, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, saying the case was closer than the majority opinion suggested, but agreeing with the result.
A negligent-hiring claim against a freight broker is not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act. The FAAAA’s safety exception saves it. States retain authority to regulate safety “with respect to motor vehicles” and require a broker to exercise ordinary care when selecting a carrier for motor vehicles. That is the whole thing. Eight pages. No dissent.
Barrett’s Analytical Framework
The core question was simple: Is a negligent-hiring claim against a broker a claim “with respect to motor vehicles”?
The FAAAA does not define “with respect to.” The Court relied on dictionary definitions, and its prior construction in Dan’s City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey (2013), where it said the phrase means “concerns.” The FAAAA defines “motor vehicle” as a vehicle propelled by mechanical power and used on a highway in transportation.
The logic flows naturally from there. A claim is “with respect to motor vehicles” if it concerns the vehicles used in transportation. Requiring C.H. Robinson to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier concerns motor vehicles — most obviously, the trucks that will transport the goods.
The Three Arguments That Failed
C.H. Robinson’s Argument #1 — The Safety Exception Would Swallow the Preemption Clause: Barrett said no. The safety exception saves only claims involving motor vehicle safety. State laws related to prices, routes, and services that have nothing to do with safety remain preempted. The clause still does work. It just does not protect brokers from accountability when their carrier selection puts dangerous trucks on the road.
C.H. Robinson’s Argument #2 — Surplusage: Barrett said the surplusage exists regardless of how you define “with respect to motor vehicles” because the overlap comes from the word “safety,” not from the breadth of the phrase.
C.H. Robinson’s Argument #3 — The Intrastate Anomaly: C.H. Robinson pointed to subsection (b) of the FAAAA, which preempts state regulation of intrastate broker activities and contains no safety exception, arguing Congress must have intended brokers to be fully shielded from safety claims. Barrett acknowledged that it is “not obvious” why Congress included a safety exception in subsection (c) but not in (b). Then she wrote the line that will be quoted in every brief filed in this area for the next decade: “Better to live with the mystery than to rewrite the statute.”
Kavanaugh’s Concurrence: The Road Map for What Comes Next
While Barrett wrote the holding, Kavanaugh’s concurrence is arguably the more consequential document for industry practitioners. He acknowledged the case was genuinely close and walked through the strongest arguments on both sides.
What Kavanaugh acknowledged in the brokers’ favor: First, the FAAAA mandates minimum insurance coverage for trucking companies but not for brokers. That gap suggests Congress did not anticipate tort suits against brokers for carrier selection. If it had, it presumably would have mandated insurance for them too. Second, the subsection (b) anomaly — Montgomery’s reading means state tort suits are permitted for interstate transportation but are preempted for intrastate transportation. That is, as Kavanaugh wrote, “exactly backward” from what ordinary preemption doctrine rooted in federalism would predict.
Why those arguments ultimately failed: The FAA Authorization Act was an economic deregulation statute. It was not a safety deregulation statute. Congress left state tort suits against trucking companies fully intact. It is hard to read the statute as written and conclude that Congress “subtly sliced and diced state tort law” so that trucking companies face liability for accidents, but brokers get complete immunity from the consequences of selecting the carrier that caused the accident.
Kavanaugh then delivered the most consequential paragraph in the opinion for the future of broker liability: There is no meaningful federal safety regulation of brokers’ carrier selection practices. FMCSA requires brokers to select a federally registered carrier but does not otherwise impose safety standards on broker hiring decisions. If Congress preempted state tort law and simultaneously failed to impose any federal safety requirements on broker selection, brokers would operate in a “black hole with no meaningful safety-related regulation.” Kavanaugh was not willing to read that result into “such indirect language in an economic-deregulation statute.”
And then the closing argument for why this ruling is ultimately the right outcome on the merits: Truck safety is a matter of life and death. In 2022, approximately 500,000 reported truck accidents resulted in about 5,000 deaths and 114,000 injuries. Not all can be prevented. But some can. Some carriers are known to be less safe. Some truck drivers are known to be unfit. If brokers can be held liable for disregarding poor safety records, they have a strong incentive to do business only with safe and reliable motor carriers.
What the Ruling Actually Requires of Brokers
Critically, this opinion does not say that every broker who touches a load that ends in a crash is liable. Kavanaugh was explicit: The plaintiff’s own counsel told the justices at oral argument that brokers should be able to successfully defend against tort suits if they have acted reasonably and arranged transportation with reputable carriers. The broker “is not going to have a problem if it’s asking the hard questions of the carrier.”
The legal standard is ordinary care. The question a jury will now be permitted to ask in every state is whether the broker exercised reasonable care in selecting the carrier: Did you check the carrier’s safety record? Was the carrier’s FMCSA data available to you? Did the data show elevated crash rates, conditional safety ratings, high out-of-service percentages, or prior enforcement history? Did you have a documented process for evaluating carrier safety? Or did you book the cheapest truck and move on?
If a broker has no documented carrier vetting process, that absence is itself evidence.
Implications for the Trucking Industry
1. Litigation Floodgates Open Immediately
Plaintiff’s attorneys who handle commercial motor vehicle crash cases have been building these case files for years, waiting for the preemption question to resolve. The dockets are ready. The carrier safety data is public. FMCSA’s SAFER system is free. A broker’s carrier selection history is discoverable in litigation. The first wave of post-Montgomery negligent-hiring suits against brokers will be filed within the next few weeks. They will target brokers who selected carriers with known safety deficiencies, conditional ratings, elevated BASIC scores, prior out-of-service orders, and especially carriers with authority less than 18 months old.
2. The Insurance Crisis Is Coming
The FAAAA mandates minimum insurance coverage for motor carriers. It does not mandate comparable coverage for brokers. The existing broker surety bond requirement under 49 U.S.C. Section 13906 is $75,000, and that is not liability insurance. It is a financial responsibility bond intended to ensure payment to carriers and shippers. It does not cover tort claims. Most freight brokers carry general liability and contingent cargo coverage, but very few carry excess liability coverage adequate to respond to a catastrophic negligent-hiring verdict in today’s nuclear verdict environment.
3. Carrier Vetting Becomes a Core Business Function
The days when a broker could book the cheapest available truck without documented due diligence are over. Brokers must now maintain rigorous, documented carrier vetting processes. This means systematic review of FMCSA SAFER data, CSA BASIC scores, crash rates, out-of-service percentages, safety ratings, and carrier age. It means keeping contemporaneous records of what data was reviewed and when. It means potentially having policies around categories of carriers they will not book — and being able to prove those policies were followed.
4. Small and Mid-Size Brokers Face Existential Risk
Large brokers like C.H. Robinson and Echo Global Logistics have compliance departments, legal teams, and capital reserves. The 28,000 licensed freight brokers in the United States include thousands of small operations without those resources. For a small brokerage booking a few million dollars of freight annually, a single nuclear verdict — increasingly common in trucking litigation — could be an existential event. This ruling is likely to accelerate consolidation in the brokerage space.
5. Freight Pricing Will Shift
Brokers absorbing new compliance costs — upgraded carrier vetting technology, additional staff, higher insurance premiums — will pass those costs into their margins or into pricing. Shippers who have long benefited from lean broker fees enabled in part by the preemption defense will see freight costs rise. Lanes served by a thinner pool of brokers willing to accept the liability risk may see even larger increases.
6. Carrier Selection Dynamics Will Change
Brokers will increasingly gravitate toward established carriers with clean FMCSA records, adequate insurance, strong safety ratings, and documented operational histories. This is objectively good for highway safety. But it also disadvantages newer carriers, small fleets building their reputation, and carriers operating in capacity-constrained markets. It may tighten available capacity for specialized freight, oversized loads, or rural lanes where carrier options are already limited.
7. The States Are Back in the Game
A bipartisan coalition of 30 Attorneys General had filed an amicus brief supporting Montgomery, arguing that F4A, primarily aimed at economic deregulation, does not preempt states’ traditional authority to regulate road safety. They won. With the preemption shield gone, state plaintiff’s bars and state AGs now have a clear path to pursue liability claims against intermediaries who facilitate dangerous transportation. Expect variation in how aggressively different states pursue this.
