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It's another lawfare day in Connecticut. Attorney General William Tong once again raced to federal court to obstruct the Trump administration, this time joining a coalition of mostly blue-state attorneys general in two lawsuits aimed at preventing the U.S. Department of Transportation from obtaining records from the Commercial Driver’s License Information System (CDLIS).
The system, operated by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) under federal contract since the late 1980s, contains the personal data of roughly 17 million commercial drivers nationwide — names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, license numbers, and state-of-issuance information. States use it to verify identity, medical fitness, driving history, and immigration status before issuing a commercial driver’s license.
According to Tong’s office, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) demanded five years of CDLIS records from AAMVA and threatened to pull more than $10 million in federal funding if the nonprofit refused. Facing that pressure, AAMVA indicated it would comply — prompting Tong and his coalition to seek emergency court orders to stop the data transfer. The lawsuits claim the demand violates privacy laws, the Administrative Procedure Act, and that the federal government has “no legitimate need” for the information.
Tong framed the fight in dramatic terms as usual: “We’re not going to let the Trump Administration bully database administrators into handing over sensitive records so that they can be misused for whatever the President’s daily whims demand.”
Connecticut families might reasonably ask a different question: Why are Democratic attorneys general so determined to keep the federal government from seeing who holds commercial driver’s licenses?
CDLs authorize the operation of large trucks, buses, and hazardous materials vehicles — roles that carry serious public-safety responsibilities. Federal law has long required states to verify immigration status as part of the CDL process. Yet multiple states have been accused of issuing commercial licenses to individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States, or of looking the other way on documentation. Once those licenses are in the system, the records sit in a state-controlled database that federal immigration authorities have historically struggled to access in real time.
Tong’s press release is careful to emphasize “privacy” and “state ownership” of the data while glossing over the immigration-status verification component that has always been part of CDLIS. Tong has previously sued to block federal access to other data (e.g., SNAP, Medicaid) — programs frequently cited in debates over benefits for illegal immigrants. It's part of his on-going pattern of protecting illegal aliens.
However, public safety should not be a partisan issue.
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