UC Bureau · Legal Alert

Montgomery v. Caribe Transport: What the Supreme Court Ruling Means for Carriers & Brokers

May 14, 2026 — SCOTUS ruled 9-0 that freight brokers can be sued for negligent carrier selection. The FAAAA preemption defense no longer applies when safety is the issue.

What Happened

On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a unanimous 9-0 decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport IIthat fundamentally changed the legal landscape for freight brokerage in the United States. The Court held that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA) does not preempt state-law negligence claims against freight brokers when the underlying claim is based on the broker's failure to exercise ordinary care in selecting a motor carrier.

For decades, freight brokers relied on FAAAA preemption as an almost automatic defense against lawsuits arising from crashes involving carriers they had selected. The argument was straightforward: because the FAAAA preempts state laws "related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier," brokers contended that carrier-selection decisions fell under "service" and were therefore shielded from state tort claims. The Supreme Court disagreed. The majority opinion drew a clear line: safety-based negligence claims are not claims about a broker's "service" in the regulatory sense. They are claims about whether the broker put a dangerous carrier on the road.

What the Court Said

The standard the Court articulated is ordinary care. The question in any post-Montgomery broker liability case will be: did the broker act as a reasonably prudent broker would act when selecting a carrier? Specifically, courts will examine whether the broker:

Reviewed publicly available safety data before tendering freight
Maintained a documented carrier vetting process
Identified and acted on red flags in a carrier's safety record
Verified that the carrier held active operating authority and valid insurance
Checked for patterns of safety violations, not just a single data point

Plaintiffs' attorneys will seek discovery on what data the broker had access to and what they did with it. The data points that will be central to litigation include: FMCSA SAFER reports, CSA/BASIC scores across all seven categories, roadside inspection histories, out-of-service violation rates (driver and vehicle), crash histories over the prior 24 months, authority age and status, insurance coverage amounts and filing dates, and MCS-150 filing currency. Every one of these data points is publicly available through FMCSA systems. That is precisely the point: the data exists, it is free, and brokers who ignore it are now legally exposed.

What This Means for Brokers

The era of selecting carriers purely on price and availability is over. Montgomery establishes that every dispatch decision is potentially discoverable in litigation. Brokers must now treat carrier selection as a documented compliance function, not just a logistics function. The practical implications are significant:

Documented vetting is now a legal defense requirement. Having a process is not enough — the process must be written, consistently followed, and produce records that can be presented in discovery.
CSA scores are now a legal defense standard. A broker who tenders freight to a carrier with BASIC scores above the intervention threshold without documenting a justification is creating a paper trail for plaintiff attorneys.
Internal procedures must exist and be followed. Ad hoc vetting — checking one carrier thoroughly and waving the next one through — will be treated as evidence of negligence when the waved-through carrier is involved in an incident.
Record retention matters. If a broker cannot produce evidence that they vetted a carrier at the time of dispatch, the absence of records will be used against them. The Court's ordinary care standard effectively requires contemporaneous documentation.
Every dispatch is discoverable. Brokers should assume that any carrier-selection decision may be examined by a plaintiff's attorney after a crash. Internal emails, TMS notes, and even the absence of queries to safety databases can be subpoenaed.

What This Means for Carriers

Montgomery does not impose new obligations on carriers directly. But it dramatically changes the economics of safety compliance. Brokers now have a powerful financial incentive to steer freight toward carriers with clean safety records and away from carriers with red flags. The practical effects for carriers:

Good compliance equals more loads. Brokers building documented vetting programs will preference carriers with Satisfactory ratings, low OOS rates, and clean inspection histories. A strong FMCSA profile is now a direct competitive advantage in the spot market.
Bad safety data equals fewer loads. Carriers with high BASIC scores, elevated crash rates, or Conditional/Unsatisfactory ratings will find themselves excluded from broker load boards and carrier panels. Some brokers will implement hard cutoffs — no carriers above a certain BASIC percentile, period.
Your FMCSA profile is now your resume. Every broker vetting you will pull the same public data: authority status, insurance, safety rating, crash count, inspection results, OOS rates, and MCS-150 freshness. This profile is the first thing brokers see and, after Montgomery, the thing their legal teams will audit.
Fixing problems now prevents revenue loss later. A carrier who cleans up violations, updates their MCS-150, and maintains current insurance is not just avoiding FMCSA enforcement — they are preserving their access to brokered freight, which represents the majority of spot-market loads.

What Carriers Should Do Now

The window between this ruling and brokers fully implementing new vetting standards is the time to act. Carriers should take the following steps immediately:

Check your own FMCSA profile. Use our free carrier lookup tool to see exactly what brokers will see when they vet you: authority status, insurance, safety rating, crash history, OOS rates, MCS-150 currency, and more. If there are surprises, you want to find them before a broker does.
Fix red flags before brokers see them. If your MCS-150 is overdue, file it. If your insurance shows a gap, contact your provider. If you have unresolved violations, address them. Brokers are building vetting checklists right now, and your profile needs to pass.
Maintain your MCS-150 filing. An overdue biennial update signals to brokers that you are not maintaining your regulatory obligations. It takes minutes to file and removes a red flag from your profile.
Keep insurance current and properly filed.FMCSA shows the insurance "on file" — meaning the insurer has notified FMCSA the policy is active. Gaps in coverage are visible to every broker running a vetting check.
Track your audit score. Our audit score tool estimates your readiness for an FMCSA compliance review and flags the same data points brokers will check. Run it regularly.
Review your CSA/BASIC scores. If any BASIC category is above the 65th percentile, you are in the intervention zone. Brokers building post-Montgomery vetting programs will treat that threshold as a hard cutoff. Understand where you stand and what is driving the score.

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What Brokers Should Do Now

Montgomery creates immediate compliance obligations for brokers. The following steps should be treated as urgent, not aspirational:

Implement a documented carrier vetting procedure. Put it in writing. Define what data you check, what thresholds trigger rejection, and what exceptions are allowed. Date it and distribute it to every dispatcher.
Check CSA/BASIC scores on every dispatch.Not just on initial carrier onboarding — on every load. A carrier's safety profile changes, and a broker who checked six months ago but not today is exposed.
Verify authority and insurance in real time. Confirm that the carrier holds active Common or Contract authority and that BIPD insurance is on file at or above required minimums. Do this for every dispatch, not just new carriers.
Use carrier vetting tools. Our carrier lookup tool checks authority, insurance, safety rating, crash history, OOS rates, MCS-150 freshness, and contact verification in one query. It produces a vetting summary that can be retained as part of your dispatch documentation.
Retain records of every vetting decision. Document what you checked, when you checked it, and what the results were. If a carrier was flagged but you proceeded anyway, document the justification. The absence of records is evidence of negligence under the ordinary care standard.
Establish a rejection threshold.Define the BASIC score percentile, OOS rate, or other metric above which you will not tender freight. Apply it consistently. Inconsistent application — rejecting one carrier at the 70th percentile but accepting another at the 80th — undermines the defense value of having a policy at all.
Check broker credit scores and carrier safety data together.Post-Montgomery, responsible brokerage means vetting both directions: the carrier's safety record and the broker's own payment reliability. Carriers are increasingly checking brokers the same way brokers now must check carriers.

The Free Carrier Vetting Tool

Montgomery v. Caribe Transport establishes that brokers must exercise ordinary care when selecting carriers — and that publicly available safety data is the baseline for that standard. Our free carrier lookup tool runs every check the ruling makes relevant in a single query:

Operating authority status (Active, Pending, Revoked, Not Authorized)
Insurance coverage — BIPD and cargo amounts on file
FMCSA safety rating (Satisfactory, Conditional, Unsatisfactory, Not Rated)
24-month crash history and fatal crash count
Driver and vehicle out-of-service rates vs. national averages
MCS-150 filing freshness
Authority age and registration date
Contact email domain health (MX, SPF, DMARC, domain age)
Phone number verification and area-code cross-reference

No signup. No paid tier. The data comes from FMCSA public APIs, MOTUS, and standard DNS queries. This is exactly the kind of vetting documentation that Montgomery requires brokers to maintain. Run it for every carrier before tendering freight, save the results, and you have a contemporaneous record of due diligence.

Vet a carrier or broker now →

Frequently Asked Questions

Can freight brokers now be sued in state court after Montgomery?

Yes. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on May 14, 2026 that the FAAAA preemption does not shield freight brokers from state-law negligence claims when the claim is based on safety. Brokers who select carriers with known safety deficiencies can be held liable in state court under ordinary negligence standards. The ruling applies nationwide.

What does "negligent carrier selection" mean after this ruling?

Negligent carrier selection means a broker failed to exercise ordinary care when choosing a motor carrier to transport freight. After Montgomery, courts will ask whether the broker reviewed publicly available safety data, had a documented vetting process, and acted on red flags. If a broker tendered freight to a carrier with an Unsatisfactory safety rating, lapsed insurance, or excessive out-of-service violations without documenting a reason, that broker is exposed to liability.

What data will plaintiffs request in discovery?

Plaintiffs will seek internal vetting procedures, carrier selection records, CSA/BASIC score queries, SAFER report pulls, insurance verification logs, inspection and crash histories, out-of-service rates, authority age checks, and any internal communications about a carrier’s safety record. The absence of these records is itself evidence of negligence under the ordinary care standard.

Does this ruling affect carriers or only brokers?

The ruling directly targets broker liability, but it has major indirect effects on carriers. Brokers will now aggressively filter carriers by safety record to limit their own legal exposure. Carriers with poor CSA scores, high out-of-service rates, or overdue MCS-150 filings will lose access to brokered freight. In practice, your FMCSA safety profile is now a prerequisite for getting loads from brokers.

Is the FAAAA preemption completely gone for brokers?

Not entirely. The Montgomery ruling eliminates FAAAA preemption specifically for state-law claims related to safety and negligent carrier selection. The FAAAA may still preempt state laws that directly regulate broker prices, routes, or services in ways unrelated to safety. The key distinction is that safety-based negligence claims are no longer preempted.

Tools carriers are using post-Montgomery

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This page is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. The information provided is based on publicly available court records and FMCSA data. Carriers and brokers should consult with a licensed attorney for guidance on how the Montgomery ruling applies to their specific operations. UC Bureau is not a law firm and does not provide legal representation.