FMCSA Final Rule Ties Clearinghouse Violations to CDL Downgrades
An October 2021 final rule required states to stop licensing, and to downgrade, CDL and CLP holders barred from driving over drug and alcohol violations, with compliance due November 18, 2024.
In October 2021, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) published a final rule requiring state driver licensing agencies (SDLAs) to act on the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse. The rule, published October 7, 2021 and known in the industry as "Clearinghouse II", meant drivers barred from safety-sensitive work over a drug or alcohol violation would also lose the commercial privilege on their license until they finished the return-to-duty process.
What the rule required of states
Under the rule, states would have to:
- Not issue, renew, upgrade or transfer a commercial driver's license (CDL) or commercial learner's permit (CLP) for a driver who is prohibited from performing safety-sensitive functions, such as driving a commercial motor vehicle, because of a drug or alcohol program violation;
- Downgrade an existing CDL or CLP, meaning remove the commercial privilege, within 60 days of being notified by FMCSA that a driver is prohibited.
The privilege could be restored once the driver completed the return-to-duty process and was no longer prohibited.
States would learn about prohibited drivers two ways. They would query the Clearinghouse before licensing actions (a "pull"), and FMCSA would notify them when a driver's status changed (a "push"). The rule also extended the existing query requirement to cover CLP applicants and holders, not just CDLs.
Roadside enforcement
The rule also affected enforcement. States receiving federal Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program funding would need to adopt and enforce a driving prohibition compatible with the federal one, which the rule added to Part 392. Officers who found a prohibited driver behind the wheel during a roadside inspection could place the driver out of service and issue a citation.
Dates
The rule took effect November 8, 2021. FMCSA gave states until November 18, 2024 to comply. That replaced the earlier January 6, 2023 compliance date for states to query the Clearinghouse, and gave states three years to make the system changes. The docket number was FMCSA-2017-0330.
The Clearinghouse after its first year
The Clearinghouse had opened in January 2020. FMCSA's monthly summary report for December 2020, covering data through January 1, 2021, gave a sense of the scale of the population the new rule would reach:
- 56,150 drug and alcohol violations reported in total, 54,949 for drugs and 1,201 for alcohol;
- positive drug tests made up 82% of the violations;
- marijuana was the most common positive result, at 29,511, followed by cocaine (7,940), methamphetamine (5,187) and amphetamine (4,953);
- 51,998 drivers had at least one violation, and 45,475 drivers were in "prohibited" status;
- 34,769 drivers had not yet started the return-to-duty process;
- 182,124 employers had registered, including 67,251 owner-operators.
FMCSA said most state licensing agencies did not receive drug and alcohol violation information at the time, so a driver under the driving prohibition could keep a valid CDL or CLP. The rule was meant to close that gap.
Archive: this article describes rules and events as of October 2021. Regulations may have changed since, so check the current rule before relying on it.