Brokers Lost Their Shield, Your CSA Score Pays

The Supreme Court took away the broker's early exit. A unanimous Court held that a claim for hiring an unsafe carrier is not blocked by federal law, so these cases now reach a jury. Brokers responded by cutting every carrier whose safety record could be read out loud in court.

Brokers Lost Their Shield, Your CSA Score Pays

For thirty years a broker had a way to end a lawsuit before it started. The argument was federal preemption: a 1994 law, the FAAAA, bars states from regulating the prices, routes and services of trucking, and brokers used it to get negligent-selection claims thrown out before discovery, and it worked over and over for three decades.

It stopped working on May 14, when a unanimous Supreme Court decided the Montgomery case and closed that exit for good. The holding fits in one line: a claim that one company negligently hired another to move goods is not preempted, because states keep their authority to regulate safety "with respect to motor vehicles."

The practical translation is short: a broker who arranges your load can now be sued in state court for choosing badly, and that lawsuit will reach a jury instead of dying in a motion. Check your own roadside inspection record this week, before a broker's vetting team checks it for you and quietly stops calling.

What the Court actually said

The FAAAA's preemption clause has a safety exception. It says preemption "shall not restrict the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles." The whole case turned on those five words.

The Court read "with respect to" the way it already had in an earlier case: it means concerns. And "motor vehicle" is defined in the statute as the tractor, trailer or semitrailer used on a highway. Put the pieces together and a claim is "with respect to motor vehicles" if it concerns the vehicles used in the transportation. Requiring a broker to use ordinary care in picking a carrier, the Court said, concerns those trucks — most obviously the ones that are going to haul the load.

There is a limit, and it matters. The exception saves only claims that involve motor vehicle safety. State law aimed at prices, routes and services with no safety connection is still preempted. This is not open season on brokers for every business dispute. It is open season on one specific question: did you look at who you hired?

Two months later, the bill arrived

According to Commercial Carrier Journal, a Dallas County jury returned a $604 million verdict in a case that could finally reach a jury because the preemption exit was gone. The jury assigned C.H. Robinson 23% direct fault for negligent selection and also found the broker vicariously liable under a "borrowed employee" theory, concluding it had exercised extensive operational control over the carrier and driver. The company has said it will appeal.

That second finding is the part brokers are losing sleep over, and it puts them in a vise. Vet a carrier too loosely and you get a negligent-selection claim. Manage the load too tightly — dispatch, tracking, hours — and you have turned an independent contractor into your employee, on paper, in front of a jury.

Why this lands on your desk and not theirs

Here is the part that concerns anyone running trucks. A broker who can no longer get dismissed early has exactly one defense left: proof that it looked at your safety record and that the record was clean.

So the record became the gate. CCJ reports that Landstar has cut its approved carrier pool from more than 100,000 in mid-2022 to roughly 64,000 at the end of the second quarter. That is a 35% reduction. Nobody sent those carriers a letter explaining why. The loads just stopped.

What gets you cut is no longer a mystery:

  • A Conditional safety rating. It used to be survivable. It is now the single cleanest reason for a broker's lawyer to say the carrier should not have been hired.
  • Out-of-service percentages above the national average. Raw roadside inspection data is public, and vetting departments read it directly now, not through a summary.
  • Recent inspection violations in the basics. Brakes, tires, lights, hours. The cheap stuff, which is exactly the stuff that shows up in a deposition.

What to do about it this month

None of this is abstract, and none of it requires a lawyer:

  • Pull your own roadside inspection data and read it. If a broker's vetting team is reading it, you should have read it first.
  • Fix the paper violations. A burned-out marker lamp and a missing annual inspection report count the same as a real defect in a score, and they cost almost nothing to prevent.
  • If you carry a Conditional rating, treat upgrading it as a revenue project, not a compliance chore. It is now worth loads.
  • Expect more paperwork from brokers, and read what you sign. Some of it will try to push liability down to you.

The old joke was that nobody checks your inspections until something goes wrong. The joke is over. Somebody checks them before you get the load.

Maintenance guides, inspection resources and shop coverage live at thetrucksavers.com, and the compliance beat continues here at Truck Savers News. Want it before it costs you a load? Get the weekly TSN newsletter.

Original source

The ruling was read in full from the Court's own opinion: Supreme Court of the United States, Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, No. 24-1238, decided May 14, 2026. The verdict and carrier-pool figures are reported by Commercial Carrier Journal.