On Wednesday March 18^th 2026, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held a mark-up of H.R. 5688, a bill that started its life last October as the “Non-Domiciled CDL Integrity Act” before being renamed “Dalilah’s Law” in recent weeks. The bill that would extend into statute many of the changes already made to regulations by the Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration (FMCSA) regarding issuance of commercial drivers’ licenses (CDLs) and add additional requirements and penalties. According to the summary released by the House majority, Dalilah’s Law would ensure all CDL holders understand English, roads signs, and law enforcement officers, and would allow enforcement officers to place drivers out of service for failure to understand English in its spoken or written forms. It also requires states to verify an individual’s immigration status before issuing a CDL and increases the withholding penalty of federal highway dollars from states that fail to comply.

One provision of the law would limit the categories of individuals who can apply for non-domiciled CDLs to the same narrower list that FMCSA has adopted in their final rule on non-domiciled CDLs that went into effect this week. Under both that rule and this law as proposed, states could only issue CDLs to U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, or an individual who holds one of three work visas— an H-2A visa (temporary farm workers), H-2B, (temporary non-farm labor), or an E-2 Treaty investor visa (for nationals from countries with qualified treaties who have made “substantial investments” in a U.S. business). Not included in this list are individuals with work authorizations through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), or through their Temporary Protected Status (TPS). It also excludes refugees and asylum seekers. FMCSA has estimated that roughly 97% of current non-domiciled CDL holders won’t be able to renew under the new regulations, an impact to approximately 200,000 commercial drivers (truckers, bus drivers, etc.). This represents approximately five percent of current commercial drivers.

The bill considered at the mark-up was an amendment in the nature of a substitute introduced by Rep. David Rouzer (R-NC), Chairman of the T&I Highways and Transit Subcommittee, amending the earlier version that Rep. Rouzer had introduced last year. The earlier bill included none of the English language requirements or visa limitations that are in the current version and focused only on ensuring that states verify the immigration status of CDL applicants.

The mark-up proceeded on a remarkably partisan basis by T&I standards, with Ranking Member Rick Larsen (D-WA) noting in his opening statement that the bill had been developed without bipartisan involvement and had been provided to the minority only on Friday of last week when the business meeting was officially noticed. He also expressed a moderate level of frustration with the committee moving a stand-alone trucking safety bill at all, when he and other members have been told that other stand-alone transportation safety bills have to wait to be considered as part of a comprehensive surface transportation bill.

With regard to substantive discussion on the bill, both Republican and Democratic members of the committee used language that differed in significant ways from prior hearings on trucking. As recently as March 2025, in a hearing on “How Trucking Supports American Communities” in the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, Subcommittee Chairman Rouzer focused in his opening statements on trucker shortages and on the importance of “growing and retaining the truck driver workforce.” At that hearing he said the committee “must explore ways to make it easier for individuals to train and test for a commercial driver’s license (CDL).” This week, Rep. Rouzer and other Republicans on the panel were focused instead of the safety threats posed by those same truckers, calling trucks at various points akin to an 80,000 pound bomb and a lethal weapon on the nation’s roadways. In contrast, at the March 2025 hearing, Ranking Member Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) was the one to focus on increasing CDL “training standards to ensure that truckers are fully prepared to safely operate their vehicles”, whereas at this week’s hearing, Democrats focused on trucking workforce issues that could occur in response to the proposed law.

Democrats on the committee offered three primary areas of critique of the bill and also offered amendments to address those concerns, none of which were accepted. One particular concern voiced is that the bill as drafted requires that if a state or federal inspector determines that a driver is “out of compliance”—e.g.  if the inspector decides that the individual cannot “speak the English language sufficiently to… converse with law enforcement officers”—then the inspector must put the CDL driver “out of service” for a full year. This is a statutory penalty currently reserved for drunk driving, leaving the scene of an accident, causing a fatality through negligent driving, or using a commercial motor vehicle in committing a felony.

Rep. Garcia (D-IL) proposed an amendment to ensure that a driver would have a chance to appeal that judgement so as not to violate the principle of due process, but Rep. Rouzer expressed confidence that this could be done through FMCSA’s existing appeals process that allows individuals to request corrections to data regarding crashes and inspections. Another Garcia amendment that was also not accepted would have narrowed the language of the law to allow drivers to receive instruction and complete portions of the test in their native languages while still preserving the requirement that drivers demonstrate adequate English comprehension to operate the vehicle and read road signs.

A third Democratic amendment, offered by Ranking Member Larsen, which he described as not addressing all the problems in the bill, would have addressed only the limitation on visa eligibility. His amendment would have expanded CDL eligibility back to refugees, DACA recipients, and others lawfully in the U.S. with work authorizations. On this amendment, one Republican (Kevin Kiley, R-CA) joined in support, but the amendment still failed.

Ultimately the bill was marked out of the T&I committee on a party-line vote. The Senate has a companion Delilah’s Law, introduced by Senator Banks (R-IN), which despite sharing a name has significant differences from the House version. That bill, for instance, would require the recertification of all CDL holders in the U.S. within 180 days of enactment, but does not include the recertification of CDL schools as required by the House bill. The Senate bill also creates a lifetime ban on obtaining a CDL for anyone who operates a commercial motor vehicle without meeting the citizenship, residency, or qualifying visa status.

The Administration’s focus on non-domiciled CDL processes is already having an impact on states. Twenty-five states including DC have now received noncompliance letters with threats to impose highway funding penalties on the state. Earlier this month, California canceled approximately 13,000 non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses (CDL), with their DMV director calling it an instance in which the “federal administration is using their war on immigration to remove qualified, hardworking commercial drivers from our workforce.” Oregon this week announced that they have permanently stopped issuing non-domiciled commercial driver licenses and learner’s permits as a result of the new FMCSA final rule.

The impact of this law, should it be passed, remains to be seen. The significant immediate impact of the change to the types of visa holders that qualify for a CDL has already been put into regulations that are in effect as of March 16^th, so mirroring that limitation in law will simply mean that a future administration could not undo the regulation without a change of law. The Senate bill’s language to require all CDL holders to recertify would also pose a major impact, but is not included in the House language.

Despite the stand-alone markup, given the partisan nature of the bill, it seems likely that this bill to amend Title 49 would not pass on its own but rather would be enacted only as part of a larger reauthorization law. At an event at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce this week, Chairman Graves shared that the committee is targeting early April for a markup of a surface bill to include highways, transit, and rail titles, with a total authorization level between $500 and $550 billion. Whether they achieve that timeline may hinge on whether this week’s partisan bill development and markup proves to be an isolated episode or a sign of a shift in working relationships.