As signaled in Dykema’s March 2026 edition, Montgomery v. Caribe Transport, II (No. 24-1238) arises from a highway accident in which Petitioner Montgomery was struck by a vehicle operated by an employee of Respondent Caribe Transport II, LLC, which had been selected by C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc., a freight broker that arranged the shipment. The case asked the Supreme Court to determine whether the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA) preempts common law negligent selection claims against freight brokers.
On May 14, 2026, Justice Barrett, writing for a unanimous Court, answered “no” to that question, holding that such claims fall within the statute’s safety exception because they constitute an exercise of a “State’s safety regulatory authority with respect to motor vehicles.” The decision provides clarity and definition to the scope of the FAAAA’s preemption provision and confirms that state law negligence claims promoting highway safety may proceed despite the statute’s broad deregulatory purpose.
Writing for the Court, Justice Barrett began by examining the statute’s text and structure. The Act broadly preempts state laws “related to a price, route, or service” of motor carriers and brokers, but separately provides that it “shall not restrict the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles.” Because the parties agreed that common law negligence rules are part of a State’s safety regulatory authority, the dispute centered on whether negligent hiring claims regulate safety “with respect to motor vehicles.”
The Court concluded that they do. Rejecting the Seventh Circuit’s narrower interpretation, the Court reasoned that negligent hiring claims are directed at preventing unsafe motor carriers and drivers from operating on public highways. Accordingly, although such claims are asserted against freight brokers rather than motor carriers themselves, they remain “with respect to motor vehicles” because they seek to prevent the very harms arising from unsafe commercial trucking operations. Notably, the Court’s reasoning focused on the act of selecting the motor carrier. In the Court’s view, imposing a duty to exercise reasonable care in selecting the entities that will operate commercial motor vehicles directly advances highway safety by encouraging those making carrier selection decisions to avoid entrusting freight to unsafe carriers. Based on Respondent Caribe Transport’s allegedly poor safety rating, the Court concluded that Petitioner Montgomery plausibly alleged the brokers should have known that selecting this motor carrier created a foreseeable risk of the accident giving rise to the claims.
Respondent C.H. Robinson and the United States, as amicus curiae, argued that interpreting the safety exception to encompass negligent hiring claims would swallow the FAAAA’s express preemption provision. The Court rejected that concern, emphasizing that the statute’s safety exception preserves only a discrete category of state laws addressing motor vehicle safety, while the statute continues to preempt state regulation of prices, routes, and service outside that sphere. The Court likewise rejected Respondent C.H. Robinson’s argument that Petitioner’s interpretation rendered other statutory carveouts superfluous, explaining that those provisions serve distinct purposes and can be harmonized with the safety exception. Finally, although the Court acknowledged some tension between the FAAAA’s safety exemption under 49 U. S. C. §14501(c) and subsection (b), which contains no comparable exception, it concluded that any perceived drafting anomaly could not overcome the statutory text Congress enacted. The Court’s holding, however, is correspondingly narrow. It resolves only negligent hiring claims against an entity alleged to have selected the motor carrier and does not address whether the safety exception applies to other participants in the transportation supply chain whose conduct nears a more attenuated or non-existent relationship to motor carrier safety.
Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Alito, concurred. Although agreeing that the statutory text compelled the Court’s holding, his concurring opinion emphasized that the interpretative question was considerably closer than the majority suggested. It further observed that today’s decision may expose freight brokers to substantial litigation and economic costs, while recognizing that those policy concerns are properly addressed by Congress rather than the courts.
Takeaways
Montgomery resolves a significant circuit split by confirming that the FAAAA does not categorically preempt state law negligent hiring claims challenging the selection of motor carriers. Equally important, the Court’s analysis was directed to the carrier selection function itself, leaving unanswered whether—and under what circumstances—the same reasoning extends to other entities participating in the transportation supply chain. Future litigation is, therefore, likely to focus both on the traditional elements of negligent hiring and on the outer boundaries of the statute’s safety exception.
For more information, please contact Chantel Febus, James Azadian, Monika Harris, or David Ter-Petrosyan.