05/28/2026
The Federal Shield Brokers Relied On for Decades Just Disappeared
What the FAAAA Shield Was — and Why the Court Removed It
For decades, freight brokers facing state negligence suits over carrier selection had a reliable exit: the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act. The FAAAA’s preemption clause bars states from enforcing laws “related to a price, route, or service” of any motor carrier or broker in interstate transportation. Courts in the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits read this broadly enough to get negligent-hiring claims dismissed before trial, while the Sixth and Ninth Circuits allowed those same claims to proceed — a circuit split the Supreme Court accepted the case specifically to resolve.
Today, roughly 28,000 brokers arrange transportation for about a third of all freight shipped in the United States by more than 780,000 carriers, according to FMCSA’s Pocket Guide to Large Truck and Bus Statistics. Every one of them woke up on May 14, 2026 in a different legal universe.
Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Barrett held that the FAAAA’s safety exception (49 U.S.C. §14501(c)(2)(A)) — which preserves state authority to regulate safety “with respect to motor vehicles” — saves negligent-hiring claims from preemption. The reasoning was eight pages and zero dissents: requiring a broker to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier “concerns” motor vehicles, because the trucks that will transport the goods are the most obvious motor vehicles involved. The availability of the broad FAAAA preemption exit is significantly narrowed.
What Happened in the Caribe Case
The crash that set this in motion happened in 2017 on an Illinois highway. A driver employed by Caribe Transport II veered off course in a Mack truck and struck Shawn Montgomery’s tractor-trailer parked on the shoulder. Montgomery lost his leg.
Freight broker C.H. Robinson had coordinated the shipment. According to the Supreme Court opinion, at the time of dispatch Caribe Transport held a “conditional” FMCSA safety rating with documented deficiencies across five categories: driver qualifications, hours of service, inspection and maintenance, recordable crash rate, and additional operational factors.
All of it was publicly available before the load was tendered. Those facts may become an important reference point in future carrier-selection cases.
This Ruling Doesn’t Just Apply to Licensed Freight Brokerages
The logic here reaches further than most auto transport operators realize. Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence identified the structural reason: FMCSA requires brokers to select a federally registered carrier but does not otherwise impose meaningful safety standards on how a broker evaluates and chooses that carrier. Without state tort accountability, broker carrier selection would operate in what Kavanaugh called “a black hole with no meaningful safety-related regulation.”
FreightWaves transportation attorney and expert witness Rob Carpenter put the scope plainly the day of the ruling: “The court said that requiring a party to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier concerns motor vehicles. That is a principle. It does not stop at licensed broker authority holders.” Auto transport brokers, dispatchers, and coordinators who make carrier selection decisions fall within the same framework.
For shippers who assumed their broker’s preemption defense insulated the entire transaction: that assumption is gone. When a broker is sued, its defense may include evidence of what the shipper knew and what the shipper’s own carrier selection criteria looked like. Dealers, auctions, fleets, and enterprise logistics teams who select carriers directly — or who exercise meaningful control over carrier selection through their broker relationships — now face the same increased scrutiny regarding how carrier-selection decisions are documented. If you’re a shipper, the question your legal team is likely to ask is not just “did our broker vet this carrier?” but also “what did we know, and what did we require?” The ruling may increase scrutiny of parties involved in carrier-selection workflows and the information available at the time dispatch decisions were made. Understanding how auto transport brokers work in the carrier selection chain has never mattered more from a legal standpoint.
The backdrop makes the stakes concrete. In 2022, approximately 500,000 reported truck accidents resulted in about 5,000 deaths and 114,000 injuries, according to FMCSA crash data cited in Kavanaugh’s concurrence. Of those fatalities, 70 percent were occupants of other vehicles — not the truck.
What ‘Ordinary Care’ Means — and What the Absence of It Looks Like
This ruling did not create a new duty. The obligation to exercise reasonable care in selecting a contractor for work that carries a risk of physical harm has existed under common law for generations — the Court cited the Restatement (Second) of Torts in the majority opinion. What changed is the procedural shield that let brokers avoid the merits entirely.
The standard is ordinary negligence, not strict liability. Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the ruling “should not be read to mean that brokers will routinely be subject to state tort liability in the wake of truck accidents.” A broker who reviewed available safety data, documented the process, and made a reasonable call should be able to defend these claims. Plaintiff’s own counsel confirmed the framing at oral argument: “the broker is not going to have a problem if it’s asking the hard questions of the carrier.”
The problem: many brokers are not asking those questions and have nothing showing they tried. As FreightWaves reported on the day of the ruling, if a broker has no documented carrier vetting process, that absence is itself evidence. Discovery in the first wave of post-Montgomery suits may seek carrier selection policies, internal screening criteria, carrier communications prior to dispatch, and records of safety data reviewed — or not reviewed.
Common Carrier-Review Practices Following Montgomery
Courts are likely to increasingly examine the operational diligence steps brokers used when selecting carriers, such as what data sources were checked, how verification was done, and whether solid documentation standards were used.
Start with FMCSA SAFER — But Understand What It Can’t Tell You
FMCSA’s SAFER system (Safety and Fitness Electronic Records) is a free, publicly accessible database giving you any carrier’s registration, operating authority, insurance filings, and formal safety rating — no account, no cost. It’s the minimum starting point, not the finish line.
Here’s what most operators don’t know: approximately 92% of active interstate motor carriers have no formal FMCSA safety rating at all, according to FMCSA’s own public comments on its Safety Fitness Determination process. A rating is only assigned after a compliance review, and FMCSA can conduct those for only a fraction of the 567,000-plus carrier population. “No rating” means the carrier was never formally evaluated — not that they passed. A process that stops at checking for a satisfactory rating is already incomplete for most carriers you’ll dispatch.
Check CSA BASIC Scores and Crash Indicators
FMCSA’s CSA system assigns BASIC percentile scores based on roadside inspections and crash reports from the prior 24 months, covering unsafe driving, crash indicators, driver fitness, hours of service compliance, and vehicle maintenance. The Caribe carrier had documented deficiencies across five of these categories — all visible in FMCSA’s public data before C.H. Robinson tendered the load. That factual record is likely to become an important reference point in future negligent-selection litigation.
Verify Insurance Through the Producer, Not a PDF
A certificate of insurance a carrier emails you reflects coverage as it existed when that PDF was generated. Verification should come through the insurance producer or a continuously monitored platform — and it should happen regularly, not just at onboarding.
The stakes matter here. The FAAAA mandates minimum insurance coverage for motor carriers but imposes no comparable requirement on brokers. The existing broker surety bond under federal law is $75,000 — a financial responsibility bond covering payment obligations, not a personal injury liability policy. Smaller operations without adequate contingent auto liability coverage face the same post-Montgomery tort exposure as large brokerages, but without the insurance to respond to a catastrophic verdict. Brokers should also review their own coverage now, not after a claim. Contingent auto liability and broker errors & omissions policies vary widely in what they cover, and many were written before Montgomery created tort exposure at this scale.
Monitor Continuously and Document at the Point of Decision
Authority lapses, insurance drops, and safety ratings change between initial vetting and the next dispatch.
One increasingly important operational consideration: timestamp and store what you checked at the time of dispatch. The question in a post-Montgomery case isn’t what the carrier’s profile looks like today — it’s what you knew when you tendered that specific load. The same FMCSA compliance principles that protect against double brokering exposure now extend to every carrier selection decision you make.
Super Dispatch’s Shipper TMS centralizes carrier network management and gives shippers a documented record of which carriers are in their approved network — a natural foundation for the kind of carrier selection audit trail likely to receive increased attention following Montgomery.
Good Carriers Are the Clear Winners Here
The ruling punishes shortcuts, not the industry. Brokers now have a direct financial incentive to dispatch only carriers with stronger safety and compliance records. Justice Kavanaugh wrote that if brokers can be held liable for disregarding poor safety records, “they have a strong incentive to do business only with safe and reliable motor carriers.”
That creates a real competitive advantage for auto transport carriers who already operate with clean FMCSA records, documented maintenance practices, and current insurance. Legal analysis from McFarlane Law describes the economic consequence plainly: the clearest outcome of Montgomery is that compliant carriers gain dispatch priority and pricing leverage over high-risk competitors.
Brokers focused on operational risk management are likely to increase route loads to the carriers who make that easy.
If your safety record is clean, your insurance is current, and your FMCSA data is visible and favorable, this ruling made you more valuable to every broker you work with.
Common Operational Diligence Practices When Evaluating Carrier Risk
What reasonable care may look like in practice, at the point of dispatch:
FMCSA SAFER check — registration, operating authority, insurance filings, and safety rating verified
CSA BASIC scores reviewed — unsafe driving, crash indicator, driver fitness, hours of service, vehicle maintenance, and HM compliance percentiles checked against current FMCSA data
Insurance verified through the producer — not a carrier-emailed PDF, and confirmed current as of the dispatch date
Continuous monitoring enabled — authority lapses, insurance changes, and safety rating shifts tracked between loads
Decision documented at dispatch — what was checked, what was found, and who made the call, timestamped and retrievable
Of course, operational practices vary depending on shipment type, risk profile, jurisdiction, and business model.
Documented Carrier Decisions Belong in Your Dispatch Workflow, Not a Browser Tab
Most brokers and coordinators running carrier safety checks are doing it in a separate tab, disconnected from the dispatch decision and from any audit trail tied to the booking. That’s a gap that may be closing Post-Montgomery. Transportation attorney and expert witness Cassandra Gaines of Carrier Assure makes the direction clear in her post-ruling analysis: sophisticated brokers are already running carrier risk review inside the dispatch workflow, with logged, documented records of every decision. Many brokers are increasingly integrating carrier-review processes directly into dispatch workflows.
The operational value of integrated workflows is not just what data was reviewed, but whether the review process was documented and retained consistently at the time dispatch decisions were made.
What Changes Now — and What Doesn’t
Montgomery didn’t create the obligation to exercise reasonable care in selecting a carrier. That duty existed under common law long before the ruling. What the Court removed was the procedural shield that let brokers escape accountability for it.
Documented operational diligence is likely to become increasingly important in post-Montgomery litigation. Safety data checked and logged. Insurance verified through the producer, not a PDF. Monitoring in place for the time between onboarding and the next dispatch. The whole process documented at the moment the booking decision is made. These are examples of operational diligence practices likely to receive increased attention following Montgomery that any broker or auto transport shipper who selects carriers should now consider implementing.
