When a commercial driver’s license (CDL) holder is convicted of a felony involving a vehicle, two distinct potential consequences are in play: the sentence for the crime and a separate CDL sanction.

The CDL sanction, in fact, may be mandatory. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) lays out specific, required CDL penalties for vehicle-involved felony convictions. It’s incumbent on state and local courts to share these convictions with the state driver’s license agency or authority (SDLA), which can impose the appropriate sanctions, as well as enter the relevant information into the Commercial Driver’s License Information System (CDLIS). The full process ultimately enables the state that issued the defendant’s CDL to take action consistent with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMSCR).

However, if courts fail to transmit conviction data along with the necessary identifying information, CDL sanctions cannot be imposed, and courts may not realize that crimes that only indirectly involve a vehicle still carry CDL implications—crimes such as smuggling and human trafficking. Such cases are often tried in courtrooms that routinely handle violent or property crimes but don’t specialize in traffic offenses, which means the connection to CDL implications isn’t as intuitive and can be missed.

A Resource for All

AAMVA’s “Felony Convictions and CDL Sanctions Whitepaper,” published in December 2024, aims to fill the gap by educating state government stakeholders about the FMCSA regulations and the need to impose CDL sanctions and share the information with
peers in other jurisdictions.

The 15-page whitepaper is designed to be accessible to SDLA staff and colleagues in a variety of partner agencies. Accordingly, it is written in plain language and is concise, says Kristen Shea, senior programs analyst for Member Services and Public Affairs at AAMVA.

“We hope this is a resource to support our SDLA members but also a resource they can use when they are forging very important communication lines with other safety stakeholders in the courts, in the prosecutor’s office and with law enforcement,” says Shea.

“AAMVA’s new ‘Felony Convictions and CDL Sanctions Whitepaper’ enables SDLA members to raise awareness with stakeholders that ought to be sharing conviction information and considering whether felony convictions include CDL implications.”

Kristen Shea, Senior Programs Analyst for Member Services and Public Affairs at AAMVA

Preventing Masking

Most of the FMCSA requirements mentioned in the whitepaper have been in place for decades, though 49 CFR §385.1 added a new lifetime CDL loss for human trafficking-related convictions in 2022. The whitepaper covers these new regulations as part of its overall aim to fill persistent gaps in awareness and compliance.

To help prevent compliance gaps, the whitepaper includes a chapter on masking, which is the term for when CDL-related convictions do not appear on the official driver history record. Sometimes masking occurs intentionally, such as when a court permits a commercial driver who committed a CDL-related offense to enter a diversion program. This can lead to law enforcement, future courts and SDLAs not being able to see the CDL holder’s full history. Federal regulators are pushing to ensure such convictions are reflected in CDLIS, preserving the integrity of the roster of safe commercial drivers.

“Most commercial drivers are very safe,” Shea says. “So it’s important for employers, law enforcement and courts to be able to identify and distinguish those who are not driving safely or exhibiting safe behaviors.”

It starts with law enforcement understanding the importance of indicating CDL status on all reports. Similarly, if courts aren’t aware of a defendant’s CDL status and its implications, then the conviction information may not be relayed to that state’s SDLA and thus not entered into CDLIS. Even though that sort of oversight is entirely unintentional, it still constitutes a lack of compliance with FMCSRs.

“If you are creating a conviction that ought to be on someone’s driver’s record and it’s not getting there, then you may be in danger of violating that masking prohibition,” Shea says.