When a semi crosses the center line on I-94, the lawsuit that follows has a predictable cast: the driver, who is often judgment-proof; the motor carrier, which is often a small LLC with the federal minimum in insurance; and, standing just offstage, the freight broker that arranged the load.
For roughly fifteen years, brokers have had a powerful answer to being named: federal preemption. On May 14, 2026, a unanimous Supreme Court took that answer away.
Minnesota should pay closer attention to this decision than any other state.
The statute
Deregulation-era federal law bars states from regulating trucking economics. 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(1) provides that a State “may not enact or enforce a law, regulation, or other provision having the force and effect of law related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier . . . broker, or freight forwarder with respect to the transportation of property.”
Brokers argued — with considerable success in the lower courts — that a state tort claim for negligently selecting a carrier is a law “related to” broker services. Choosing which carrier hauls the load is, after all, the entire service a broker provides.
But the same statute contains an exception. § 14501(c)(2)(A) says the preemption provision “shall not restrict the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles.”
The circuits split on whether a common-law negligence claim brought by a private plaintiff counts as an exercise of a State’s “safety regulatory authority.”
What the Court held
Justice Barrett, writing for a unanimous Court, held that a claim that a freight broker negligently hired a motor carrier to transport goods is not preempted by the FAAAA, because under the statute States retain authority to regulate safety with respect to motor vehicles. Justice Kavanaugh filed a concurrence, joined by Justice Alito.
The practical effect is straightforward. The broker is now a defendant on the merits rather than a defendant with a dispositive motion. Whether it exercised reasonable care in selecting the carrier becomes a jury question about what the broker knew, what it checked, and what it ignored.
Why this is a Minnesota story
Start with the caption. The broker whose carrier-selection conduct was at issue in Montgomery is C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc., headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota — a respondent in the case, alongside the motor carrier and the driver.
The underlying facts, as alleged: a driver hauling freight for the carrier struck the plaintiff’s stopped tractor-trailer in Illinois, and the plaintiff lost a leg. The plaintiff alleged the broker negligently selected that carrier despite a “conditional” federal safety rating with deficiencies in driver qualification, hours of service, maintenance, and crash rates. Those are allegations. The Supreme Court decided only that such a claim is not preempted — not that it succeeds, and not that anyone is liable. The case returns to the lower courts for that.
The Minnesota point is not that a Minnesota company was a defendant. It is that this is where the industry lives. C.H. Robinson is by net revenue the largest freight brokerage in North America; its own materials describe roughly 75,000 customers and 450,000 contract carriers, moving about $23 billion in freight annually. Around it sits a dense ecosystem of Minnesota-based 3PLs, digital brokers, freight forwarders, and shipper logistics departments at the food, agriculture, retail, and medical-device companies this state is built on.
Add the geography. Minnesota sits at the intersection of I-94 and I-35, moves agricultural commodities south and east and finished goods north and west, and hosts one of the busiest cross-border corridors with Canada. The loads are arranged here, and a great many of them roll through here.
So when the Supreme Court holds that broker carrier-selection decisions are subject to state negligence law, the state where those decisions are made is where the consequences concentrate.
What changes for brokers, shippers, and 3PLs
The defense is now reasonable care in carrier selection, and that defense is built long before any accident, out of documents.
The carrier qualification file becomes the case. FMCSA operating authority, safety ratings, out-of-service rates, crash history, and the Safety Measurement System percentiles — pulled at the time of the load, and retained. A vetting standard that exists as a policy but not as a record is worth very little in front of a jury.
Insurance verification has to be real and current. A certificate obtained at onboarding in 2023 does not establish that coverage existed on the day of the collision. Continuous monitoring and dated documentation are the difference between a defensible file and an indefensible one.
Red flags have to have a documented disposition. The dangerous fact is not that a carrier had a poor safety score. It is that the broker had the score in hand, used the carrier anyway, and cannot say why. Every override needs a reason attached to it, in writing, at the time.
Contracts need review, but they are not a shield against the injured party. Indemnity and hold-harmless provisions between broker and carrier allocate risk between those two parties. They do not prevent a plaintiff from naming the broker, and they are worth exactly what the carrier’s balance sheet is worth.
Insurance programs deserve a fresh look. Contingent auto liability, broker E&O, and umbrella coverage were priced in a world where preemption dismissed a large share of these claims early. That world ended on May 14, 2026. Coverage adequacy, defense-cost provisions, and the interaction between contingent and primary layers are all worth re-examining now rather than after a claim.
What changes for people who are hurt
The other half of this decision is simpler, and it matters to Minnesotans on the receiving end of a truck accident.
Catastrophic trucking cases regularly involve a driver with no assets and a motor carrier whose insurance does not approach the value of the harm. The federal minimum for most interstate property carriers is $750,000, unchanged since January 1, 1985 — 41 years — and a serious brain or spine injury can exhaust that in the first month of medical care.
Montgomery means that where a broker actually was careless in selecting the carrier — where the safety record was there to be seen and was not looked at, or was looked at and disregarded — the injured person now has a claim that survives a motion to dismiss rather than one foreclosed by a preemption ruling before discovery.
It is not automatic liability. It is a claim that gets decided on evidence.
The larger point
The FAAAA was written to keep states from re-regulating trucking rates and routes after federal deregulation. It was never written to decide who answers for a crash.
For years the statute did that work anyway, because “related to a . . . service” is a wide phrase and brokers made a plausible argument that it swallowed negligent hiring. A unanimous Court has now said the safety exception means what it says: a state’s authority over motor-vehicle safety survives, and the common law of negligence is part of how a state exercises it.
For an industry that runs on paperwork, the instruction is fitting. The defense is the file.
If you operate a brokerage, 3PL, or shipper logistics function in Minnesota and want your carrier-vetting documentation and contracts reviewed against this decision — or if you were injured in a collision with a commercial motor carrier — send us a message or call 612-470-6529.
Sources: Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, 608 U. S. ___ (2026) (Barrett, J.), No. 24–1238, decided May 14, 2026 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring, joined by Alito, J.); 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(1), (c)(2)(A); 49 C.F.R. § 387.9 ($750,000 minimum, effective January 1, 1985); C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc., “About us” (retrieved July 2026) and SEC filings; Transport Topics, Top Freight Brokerage Firms (2025). This article is general commentary on a published decision and federal statutes, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Allegations described in Montgomery are allegations only; the Supreme Court decided a preemption question and did not determine liability, and no finding of wrongdoing by any party is asserted or implied here. Liability in any particular case depends entirely on that case’s facts. No outcome is promised or implied.