Transportation Lawsuits: Freight Broker Preemption and Liability

Freight brokers can now be sued in state court for negligently hiring an unsafe trucking company, following a unanimous Supreme Court ruling on May 14, 2026. The decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC resolved a long-running circuit split and stripped brokers of a federal preemption defense they had used for years to escape crash lawsuits. The freight broker liability Supreme Court ruling means that the middleman who arranges a shipment can be held to a duty of reasonable care in choosing the carrier that hauls it.¹

The Case Behind the Ruling

On the night of December 7, 2017, Shawn Montgomery pulled his 2015 Mack Truck onto the shoulder of westbound Interstate 70 in Cumberland County, Illinois, after a mechanical problem. A 1995 Freightliner tractor-trailer driven by Yosniel Varela-Mojena veered off the road and rear-ended the stopped vehicle at high speed. Montgomery lost his left leg and suffered permanent disfigurement along with lasting injuries.¹

Varela-Mojena drove for Caribe Transport II. According to Montgomery’s complaint, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had given Caribe a “conditional” safety rating at the time of the crash, citing deficiencies in driver qualifications, hours-of-service compliance, vehicle maintenance, and crash rates. Out-of-service rates for both drivers and vehicles were running at twice the national average.²

Montgomery sued the driver and the carrier. He also sued C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc., the freight broker that had arranged the shipment and one of the largest transportation brokers in the country. His theory against the broker was direct: C.H. Robinson should not have hired a carrier with that safety record, and its failure to exercise basic care in the selection contributed to his injuries.

The Preemption Question

C.H. Robinson’s defense rested on the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994, or FAAAA. Despite the name, the statute is a trucking deregulation law. It bars states from enacting laws “related to a price, route, or service” of motor carriers or brokers, so that a patchwork of state economic rules would not burden interstate commerce.

The FAAAA also carries a safety exception. Under 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(2)(A), preemption does not “restrict the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles.” The question in Montgomery’s case was whether a negligent-hiring lawsuit against a broker falls inside that exception, or whether it is the kind of state-law claim Congress meant to preempt.³

Federal courts had split on that question. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois dismissed Montgomery’s claim as preempted, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed in March 2025.⁴ The Ninth Circuit had gone the other way in Miller v. C.H. Robinson Worldwide in 2020, and the Sixth Circuit did the same in Cox v. Total Quality Logistics in 2025. The Eleventh Circuit sided with the Seventh.³ The Supreme Court took the case in June 2025.

How the Court Ruled

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for a unanimous Court. The analysis turned on four words in the safety exception: “with respect to.” Following the Court’s earlier decision in Dan’s City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey, Barrett read the phrase to mean “concerns.” A negligent-hiring claim against a broker imposes a duty of reasonable care in selecting a carrier for transportation work, and because that duty directly concerns the motor vehicles used to move goods, the claim falls within the safety exception.³

The Court also rejected C.H. Robinson’s argument that the safety exception protects only motor carriers, not brokers. Barrett wrote that it would be “odder” to read the statute in a way that allowed an injured person to sue the trucking company that caused the crash while shielding the broker that hired that same unsafe company. The text of the safety exception controls, she concluded, regardless of anomalies elsewhere in the statute.⁴

The ruling reversed the Seventh Circuit and sent the case back to the lower courts so Montgomery’s claim can proceed on the merits.

What Kavanaugh’s Concurrence Added

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, wrote separately to say that the case was “closer than the Court’s opinion perhaps might suggest.” He agreed with the outcome but set expectations about what the ruling actually means. Brokers who act reasonably and select reputable carriers, he wrote, “should be able to successfully defend against state tort suits.” The decision does not turn brokers into automatic insurers of every load they arrange.¹

Kavanaugh emphasized that the FAAAA was a statute about economic deregulation, not safety deregulation, and that reading it to create a “black hole” of no broker accountability for safety would be a stretch. He pointed to ordinary tort protections, particularly proximate-cause requirements, as a check against runaway liability. He acknowledged the industry’s concerns about litigation costs and insurance premiums, but his answer was that brokers unhappy with the result “may of course ask Congress and the President to change federal law.”³

What Changes for Brokers Now

The freight brokerage industry is large. Roughly 28,000 brokers coordinate shipping for about one-third of all freight in the United States, working with more than 780,000 carriers.⁵ Before Montgomery, brokers in several circuits could invoke federal preemption as a near-complete defense. That defense is gone nationwide.

Industry groups pushed back hard. The Transportation Intermediaries Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers had filed briefs warning that the ruling would increase litigation, raise insurance premiums, and drive up consumer prices. C.H. Robinson and other industry players warned the decision could “destroy hundreds of thousands of small trucking companies” by pushing brokers to favor large carriers over smaller ones regardless of individual safety records.⁶

C.H. Robinson’s chief legal officer, Dorothy Capers, said the company was disappointed but would “continue to operate responsibly” and maintain its carrier-selection processes. The company also voiced support for “Dalilah’s Law,” proposed legislation aimed at preventing non-compliant individuals from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses.⁷

Practical operations will shift too. Legal analysts expect discovery in future crash suits to probe carrier-vetting policies, safety-rating usage, and communication logs. Defense strategy is moving from preemption arguments to traditional tort defenses focused on whether the broker acted reasonably.⁶ Brokers face a practical obstacle in mounting that defense: they generally lack access to internal carrier data such as individual driver records or the FMCSA’s Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse.

In early June 2026, the Transportation Intermediaries Association petitioned the FMCSA to create a federal “Motor Carrier Safety Selection Standard” and publish a list of high-risk carriers. The petition argued that without a clear federal benchmark, brokers face an “untenable” burden in defending negligent-hiring claims. As of mid-June 2026, the FMCSA had not acted on the request.⁸

What Changes for Injured Plaintiffs

People hurt in crashes involving brokered loads now have a defendant available to them that federal law effectively kept off the table in parts of the country. A negligent-hiring claim against a broker can proceed under state tort law in all 50 states, subject to the ordinary elements: duty, breach, causation, and damages. The Court did not create a new cause of action, and it did not lower any burden of proof. What it did was clear the preemption obstacle that had ended cases like Montgomery’s before a jury ever heard the facts.

The ruling also does not touch the direct liability of the driver or the trucking company, and it does not decide any particular broker’s fault. As Kavanaugh’s concurrence flagged, a broker that ran a real check on the carrier’s safety record and had no reason to doubt it should have a meaningful defense. Whether the broker in a given case met that standard is now a question for the trial court, not a threshold federal-law bar. How lower courts define “reasonable care” in the cases that follow will shape the ruling’s practical reach.

1
SCOTUSblog. Court Rules Freight Brokers Can Face Negligent Hiring Suits Under State Law
2
Supreme Court of the United States. Joint Appendix, Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II
3
Supreme Court of the United States. Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, Opinion
4
Cornell Law Institute. Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II
5
Morris James LLP. Supreme Court Allows Negligent Hiring Claims Against Freight Brokers After Serious Truck Accident
6
Trucking Dive. Supreme Court Freight Brokerage Case Montgomery Caribe Transport II
7
C.H. Robinson. C.H. Robinson Responds to Supreme Court Decision on Federal Safety Oversight
8
Overdrive. Brokers Want FMCSA to Publish List of High Risk Motor Carriers