President Donald Trump on Monday ordered federal transportation officials to increase enforcement of English language proficiency standards among truck drivers and to push lack of compliance as an out-of-service violation.
Federal law already requires truck drivers to read and speak English “sufficiently,” such that they can converse with the general public, respond to official inquiries, read highway signs and make entries in reports or records.
However, federal officials had not considered violations of that law as a reason to place a driver out-of-service since June 2016, as a result of a policy memorandum on the topic.
Now, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has direct instructions to rescind that policy memorandum and issue new federal guidance ensuring drivers who fail to meet language standards are placed out-of-service.
“Federal law is clear, a driver who cannot sufficiently read or speak English—our national language—and understand road signs is unqualified to drive a commercial motor vehicle in America,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said in a press release Monday. “This commonsense standard should have never been abandoned.”
Notably, federal officials are not solely responsible for setting out-of-state criteria — instead, those standards are set annually by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, a coalition of local, state and federal law enforcement officials. While federal officials can set their own standard, state officials do the bulk of all trucking inspections.
In 2024, federal officials conducted 72,485 inspections — less than 3% of 2.9 million total inspections — while state inspections accounted for 2.8 million of the total, per FMCSA data.
Given the discrepancy, the Department of Transportation called on the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance to update its out-of-service criteria to include violations of the English language proficiency standard. Doing so “will provide uniform enforcement by Federal and State inspectors,” according to the press release.
A CVSA committee on Tuesday voted to add non-compliance with English language proficiency to out-of-service criteria, subject to a final decision by the organization's board, which will review the proposal on Thursday, Adrienne Gildea, deputy executive director for the agency, said in an email.
The English-language proficiency standard has been a subject for debate and shifting policy for several decades. Modifications to the rule have been proposed since at least 1997, though concrete evidence to justify changes have frequently limited efforts. Since then, the FMCSA has commissioned several studies and worked to build out further exceptions to the rule, such as for the deaf or hard of hearing.
In 2015, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance stopped enforcing the English language requirement as an out-of-service violation, leading the FMCSA to issue the same guidance in its now-rescinded June 2016 memo.
However, both the American Trucking Associations and Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association have recently lobbied to bring back enforcement of the English language standard, arguing uneven enforcement of the law has caused confusion and safety issues in the past few years.
“Road signs save lives—but only when they’re understood,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer said in a statement. “That’s why OOIDA petitioned the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance earlier this year to reinstate English proficiency as an out-of-service violation. Today’s announcement is a welcome step toward restoring a common-sense safety standard.”
Similarly, ATA CEO Chris Spear had included the issue in a list of three enforcement priorities for the trucking industry, delivered as a letter to Duffy on April 10, 2025. Spear’s concerns also included issues with the CDL training provider registry and concerns over misuse of B-1 visas in trucking.
The Department of Transportation said Monday it would also review “non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) to identify any usual patterns or other suspicious irregularities” as part of its actions following the English-language proficiency executive order.
