Litigation Efforts
ATA’s aggressive litigation docket provides significant benefits to the trucking industry as a whole. Over the years, the ATA Litigation Center has scored over 150 legal victories for the trucking industry, including wins in almost every area that affects trucking. Recent successes include a significant victory when the United States Supreme Court affirmed a First Circuit Court of Appeals decision that broadly applied “rates, routes, and services” preemption in striking down burdensome Maine tobacco delivery regulations. The Court rejected the State’s contention that the preemption provision be limited to only economic regulations and/or that public health laws should not fall under its scope.
ATA is already utilizing the very positive precedent from the Maine case to support a recently filed challenge to two California Ports’ Concession Plan regulations that, among other things, prohibit the use of owner-operators to service the ports. ATA also continues to make a variety of amicus filings on behalf of its members. Two such amicus briefs recently produced favorable rulings in an owner-operator worker classification case in North Dakota and in a sales tax case in Michigan. In the North Dakota case, the Court agreed with ATA that the traditional right of control test was to be used for determining worker status and that under it the owner-operator was an independent contractor. In the Michigan case, the Court also agreed with ATA that interstate commerce is defined by the overall movement of the freight, not whether a truck crosses and state’s borders, and that the motor carriers involved were eligible for a sales tax exemption because their point to point operations in Michigan were a part of interstate commerce.
-- ATA Staff Liaison: Robert Digges
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Chairman
G. Mack Dove
Chief Executive Officer
AAA Cooper Transportation
Dothan, AL
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Vice Chairman
Richard S. Reiser, Esq.
Executive VP & General Counsel
Werner Enterprises, Inc.
Omaha, NE
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