Teamsters California filed suit against the California Department of Motor Vehicles on August 5, 2026, in Alameda Superior Court, alleging the agency circumvented state law when it adopted regulations permitting driverless heavy-duty trucks on public roads1,5.
The lawsuit targets autonomous vehicle regulations the California DMV announced in late April 2026, which for the first time allow manufacturers to apply for permits to test and deploy commercial vehicles weighing more than 10,000 pounds in fully autonomous mode on California roadways4. California had previously banned autonomous testing or deployment of any vehicle above that weight threshold6.
The union's central legal argument is that the DMV violated the California Administrative Procedure Act by using an abbreviated rulemaking process designed for minor regulatory updates with less than $50 million in first-year costs or benefits. According to Teamsters California, the rules should have undergone a more extensive review because their economic impact could exceed $50 million during the first year. Union officials allege the DMV estimated the impact at roughly $5.8 million by focusing largely on companies' data-reporting costs while overlooking expenses tied to vehicles, facilities, testing, and staffing. The lawsuit further alleges the DMV's process claimed not a single job would be eliminated by autonomous heavy vehicles3.
"Every day brings new evidence that Waymo robotaxis are putting public safety at risk, and those dangers scale up exponentially with trucks that are up to 16 times heavier and moving at highway speeds," said Peter Finn, co-chair of Teamsters California. "Such a critical decision with life-and-death consequences must involve public input and transparency — that is why Teamsters California is taking the DMV to court and demanding California follow the law and thoroughly study the consequences of allowing 80,000-pound driverless vehicles on our roads before actually permitting them".
The lawsuit also charges that the DMV failed to consider safety risks to motorists sharing the road with self-driving trucks that are still being tested and have not been fully vetted.
The labor stakes are substantial. California leads the nation in employed truck drivers, with over 200,000 semi-truck driver employees and a similar number of independent owner-operators, according to the Teamsters. The union contends that deployment of self-driving trucks could eventually eliminate the jobs of more than 200,000 employee semi-truck drivers across the state, with a similarly large number of self-employed drivers of commercial vehicles weighing between 10,001 and 25,999 pounds also potentially affected.
Victor Mineros, co-chair of Teamsters California, said the union would "keep fighting for public safety and good jobs on every front" and that "California's leaders must put communities' needs, not corporate greed, front and center".
In its filing, Teamsters California asks a judge to invalidate the regulations, block the DMV from enforcing them, and order the agency to conduct a standardized regulatory impact assessment before developing new rules expanding the use of driverless vehicles in the state. The lawsuit also asks the court to declare the new rules unclear and require the DMV to share the data it used to develop them.
The DMV declined to address the allegations, saying in a statement that it could not comment on pending and active litigation.
The regulations require 500,000 miles of testing for heavy-duty trucks and 50,000 miles for light-duty trucks, and they establish a procedure for law enforcement agencies to issue citations to companies that own autonomous vehicles if those vehicles break traffic laws. A recent poll cited by the Teamsters found four in five California voters support legislation requiring a human safety operator in all self-driving trucks and delivery vehicles on public roads. Gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra has committed to reversing the DMV's heavy-duty autonomous vehicle rules if elected.
Teamsters California is represented in the lawsuit by Bush Gottlieb.
ANALYSIS The suit represents a direct procedural challenge to the regulatory pathway California created for autonomous trucking — if a court invalidates the rules, companies seeking to deploy driverless heavy trucks in the state would face an indefinite permitting freeze until the DMV completes a full economic impact review.