The Supreme Court Settles Freight Broker Liability: Negligent-Hiring Claims Survive FAAAA Preemption

What happened

A truck hauling a load of plastic pots through Illinois veered off course and struck Shawn Montgomery’s tractor-trailer, which was stopped on the side of the road. Montgomery’s leg had to be amputated, and he sustained other severe and permanent injuries. The driver was operating for Caribe Transport II, LLC, a motor carrier. A national freight broker had coordinated the shipment.

Montgomery sued the driver, the carrier, and the broker. Against the broker, he alleged negligent hiring. According to the complaint, the carrier held a Conditional safety rating from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration when the broker selected it, and FMCSA had found the carrier deficient in driver qualification, hours of service, inspection, repair and maintenance, and recordable crash rate. On that record, Montgomery claimed, the broker knew or should have known that choosing this carrier to move freight was reasonably likely to result in a crash that would injure someone.

The federal district court dismissed the claim against the broker as preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed at 124 F.4th 1053 (2025), following its own 2023 precedent. The Supreme Court granted certiorari on October 3, 2025, heard argument on March 4, 2026, and reversed on May 14, 2026.

The statute: one preemption clause, one safety exception

Two short provisions of 49 U.S.C. §14501(c) decided this case. Subsection (c)(1) preempts any state law “related to a price, route, or service” of a motor carrier or broker “with respect to the transportation of property”. Subsection (c)(2)(A), known as the safety exception, provides that the preemption clause “shall not restrict the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles”.

Every party agreed that state common-law negligence duties are part of a state’s authority to regulate safety. So the entire case reduced to five words: is a negligent-hiring claim against a broker a claim “with respect to motor vehicles”?

The holding: yes, and it was unanimous

Justice Barrett, writing for a unanimous Court, answered yes. The Court read “with respect to” to mean “concerns”, consistent with its 2013 decision in Dan’s City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey, and applied the FAAAA’s own definition of “motor vehicle” in 49 U.S.C. §13102(16). Requiring a broker “to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier”, the Court held, “concerns” motor vehicles, most obviously the trucks that will haul the goods. The negligent-hiring claim therefore falls inside the safety exception, which saves it from preemption.

The Court was careful about scope. The safety exception does not swallow FAAAA preemption whole: state laws about carrier prices, routes, and services that have no relationship to safety remain preempted. The Court also assumed, without deciding, that Montgomery’s claim would otherwise have been preempted under subsection (c)(1). The ruling is narrow in form and broad in effect. In every federal circuit, an injured plaintiff may now bring a state negligent-selection claim against the broker that arranged the load.

The circuit split, resolved

After Montgomery, the answer is the same everywhere: these claims are not preempted.

The concurrence: a vetting roadmap in plain sight

Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Alito, joined the opinion in full but wrote separately to say the case was, in his words, “closer than the Court’s opinion perhaps might suggest”. His concurrence is the part working brokers should read twice, because it describes how a broker wins one of these suits.

He starts with scale. The majority opinion notes that roughly 28,000 brokers arrange transportation for about a third of all freight shipped in the United States, moved by more than 780,000 carriers. The concurrence adds FMCSA’s own crash data: in 2022, about 500,000 reported truck accidents resulted in roughly 5,000 deaths and 114,000 injuries. Some carriers, he writes, are known to be less safe, and some drivers are known to be unfit. The negligent-hiring tort exists to keep both off the highway.

Then comes the line that matters most for day-to-day operations:

Brokers “should be able to successfully defend against state tort suits if the brokers have acted reasonably and arranged transportation with reputable trucking companies.” Justice Kavanaugh, concurring, joined by Justice Alito

He quotes the injured driver’s own counsel, who told the Court that a broker “is not going to have a problem” if it is “asking the hard questions of the carrier”, and notes that ordinary proximate-cause rules should screen out excessive liability. He also acknowledges the brokers’ side: federal law imposes almost no safety standards on broker hiring beyond requiring selection of a registered carrier, litigation and insurance costs are real, and Congress remains free to change the statute. But the closing sentence is unambiguous: as of now, federal law “does not preempt state tort liability against brokers for negligent selection of trucking companies”.

What brokers should do now

The Montgomery complaint was built almost entirely from public FMCSA data: an alleged Conditional safety rating and documented compliance deficiencies that anyone could have checked before the load was tendered. That is the lesson. The defensible file Justice Kavanaugh describes is assembled from government records, checked before tender, and documented every time.

1. Verify authority and insurance first. Confirm active operating authority and required insurance filings in FMCSA’s Licensing and Insurance system before the first tender, and re-verify on a set schedule, not just at onboarding.
2. Check the safety rating every time. A carrier rated Conditional is the exact fact pattern in Montgomery. If you tender to a Conditional carrier anyway, document the specific justification and any corrective evidence you relied on.
3. Pull the public safety data. Review the carrier’s crash and inspection history in FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System and its SAFER company snapshot, and keep dated copies in the carrier file. “Asking the hard questions” starts with reading the answers the government already publishes.
4. Re-vet at intervals. Ratings, scores, and insurance lapse and change. A check performed once, years ago, ages badly in front of a jury. Calendar periodic re-checks for every active carrier.
5. Write the selection policy down and follow it. A written carrier-selection standard, applied consistently and reflected in the file, is the backbone of the “acted reasonably” defense. An unwritten policy, or a written one that is ignored, is worse than none.

What carriers should expect

If you run trucks, Montgomery changes who is reading your safety record and why. Brokers now have a litigation reason, not just a commercial one, to screen every carrier against federal data before tendering freight, and to walk away from anything that resembles the fact pattern in this case.

Expect three things. First, a Conditional safety rating will cost you freight immediately, not eventually. It is now the single fact most likely to make a broker decline the tender. Second, your public data will be checked more often: authority status, insurance on file, crash and inspection history, and a current MCS-150. Stale or inaccurate filings read as risk. Third, documentation requests will grow. The concurrence quotes counsel’s point that carriers should have reasonable safety policies of their own, so brokers building defensible files will increasingly ask for proof of your drug and alcohol program, your driver qualification practices, and your required training records, because their file is built partly from yours.

The flip side is opportunity. A clean rating and a current, documented compliance record are now a sales asset. The carrier that can hand a broker a complete file wins the tender from the carrier that cannot.

DotMotusCompliance Inc. is a private compliance services firm. We are not a government agency or a law firm, and we are not affiliated with FMCSA or USDOT. This article is general information, not legal advice. The decision discussed here is summarized from the official slip opinion, which is subject to formal revision before publication in the United States Reports. Always verify current requirements directly with FMCSA and official government sources, and consult a transportation attorney about specific liability questions.