More than 2,200 comments filed with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration overwhelmingly back codifying the English Language Proficiency (ELP) rule — but among the few dissenters stands the Sikh Coalition, which wants the proposal withdrawn entirely on the grounds that enforcement could invite discrimination against Sikh drivers.

The comment window on FMCSA's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking closed last Friday. The rule would update existing regulations so that noncompliance with ELP requirements places a driver out of service, with one exception: truck traffic localized to the U.S.-Mexico border that is not heading further inland.

The Sikh Coalition, which describes itself as a "nonprofit and nonpartisan organization dedicated to ensuring that members of the Sikh community in America are able to practice their faith without fear of discrimination," has taken particular interest in the rule given the large number of Sikh drivers on U.S. highways.

What does the rule change?

Under the proposal, a driver who fails an ELP assessment at roadside would be placed out of service immediately. The Sikh Coalition does not dispute the underlying safety premise. It "agrees there is a common-sense safety need for all drivers to understand a level of English as is already required by federal law," its filing said, but added that "certain steps needed to be taken to mitigate the risk of discrimination during the course of or under the guise of ELP enforcement."

The group told FMCSA it had previously raised concerns with the Department of Transportation about "the lack of clear criteria for roadside inspectors to use to determine whether to subject drivers to ELP assessments, and the lack of any information as to what recourse is available to drivers rendered out of service (OOS) due to alleged ELP violations."

The Coalition also cited an FMCSA decision from 2016, when the agency removed the out-of-service requirement after the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance could not substantiate the requirement's safety impact.

Its own analysis of FMCSA roadside inspection data from 2021 to 2025 found that just 0.19% of inspections "involved a driver's inability to communicate in or understand English" — roughly two inspections in every thousand.

What happened at Road Check?

This year's Road Check Week told a different story. ELP violations became a top-five reason for inspectors to issue an out-of-service order, accounting for 9.1% of all OOS orders handed down during the enforcement blitz.

"Our goal is to reduce the risk of any discrimination against truck drivers who could be profiled for their appearance and subject to disproportionate or discriminatory additional scrutiny during roadside inspections in the name of ELP enforcement," the Coalition's comments said. "It is critical that FMCSA establish clear, objective standards for roadside inspectors tasked with carrying out ELP enforcement to mitigate the risk of wrongful discrimination against Sikh or other commercial drivers."

The filing also pointed to a Department of Homeland Security social media post last month — since taken down — that referenced Sikh drivers and declared, "Get off our roads, you don't know how to drive, Mr. Singh."

"FMCSA has consistently provided reason to believe that it is less interested in improving safety outcomes and more interested in removing certain drivers from the road because of where they come from," the Coalition said, closing with a request that the agency withdraw the NPRM and "instead invest in tailored, evidence-based safety measures."

How did the industry respond?

The largest bloc of comments came from an email campaign by an unknown organizer, with dozens of verbatim submissions invoking Dalilah Coleman, injured at age five in a 2024 California crash involving a driver in the U.S. illegally. "Dalilah's story should not be the next in a saga of many others like it," the emails read. "It should be the last one ever told."

That crash spurred Dalilah's Law in the House and Senate, which includes ELP provisions. The House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee advanced the bill, but the full House has not taken it up, and the Senate companion received no committee vote — leaving passage unlikely before the next Congress.

The American Trucking Associations broadly supported the rule but echoed concerns about subjectivity. The current assessment process "leaves room for subjective interpretation by individual enforcement officials," the ATA said, warning that "a driver's level of English proficiency may be deemed sufficient by one officer yet insufficient by another." ATA urged FMCSA to build a standardized ELP assessment into CDL issuance and renewal, testing drivers "at the front door" rather than at roadside.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association was more effusive in its praise, noting that CVSA removed the ELP requirement in 2015 and that violations "went largely unenforced and unreported for a decade." OOIDA cited the drop from more than 100,000 ELP violations at roadside in 2014 to just 9,700 in 2024, linking weak enforcement and the growth of non-domiciled CDL issuance to "numerous fatal crashes."

With the comment record now closed, FMCSA must weigh a rule that enjoys broad industry support against warnings from both a civil rights group and the ATA that enforcement standards — not the rule itself — will determine whether it survives contact with the roadside.