A bill, SB 442, has been registered in the Georgia State Senate, changing the rules for holding Commercial Driver's Licenses (CDL) for drivers who are not U.S. citizens. The key idea is to link the validity of a CDL to immigration status and introduce a 'hard timer' of five years: upon visa expiration or five years after issuance (whichever comes first), the license must be automatically revoked.
The document was initiated by State Senator Jason T. Dickerson (Republican Party), a former co-founder of Quest Trucking, first elected to the Georgia Senate in 2025. According to the legislative tracker, SB 442 was introduced on January 29, 2026, and sent to the Senate Public Safety Committee on February 2. The basic mechanics of the initiative are confirmed by the bill text published in the monitoring system: SB 442 on LegiScan.
The SB 442 project proposes to create a separate control circuit for non-citizens at the state level to verify the validity of CDL.
Firstly, automatic termination of CDL is introduced upon the occurrence of one of two events:
- expiration of the visa/immigration document granting the right to stay and work;
- expiration of the five-year period from the date of CDL issuance, even if immigration documents are valid longer.
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The wording 'whichever comes first' is important for carrier practice. This means that even with a stable status (e.g., when extending permits), a driver continuously working with a CDL in Georgia will still have to undergo the qualification confirmation procedure every five years.
Secondly, the bill mandates that non-citizens retake the theoretical and practical parts of the exam when attempting to 'return' to CDL after such revocation or upon renewal/reissuance. This is not about standard administrative renewal but about actual re-admission to the profession through knowledge and skills testing. For the market, this means additional load on examination capacities, queues, training schedules, as well as direct costs for drivers and carriers for preparation and downtime.
The emergence of SB 442 fits into a broader discussion around non-domiciled CDL (licenses issued to individuals without 'domicile' in the state) and strengthening document control. In 2025, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) published an interim final rule, positioning it as a measure to 'restore integrity' to the issuance procedures of non-domiciled CDL and enhance oversight of state licensing authorities. However, the federal story has a legal fork: FMCSA indicates that the rule's effect was suspended by a decision of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in November 2025 'until further notice' — meaning it has not formally come into effect as stated. This position is reflected in FMCSA materials: FMCSA notice on IFR suspension.
Simultaneously, at the state level, the Georgia Department of Driver Services (DDS) continued to describe changes and checks related to the federal initiative in its clarifications (including verification through SAVE and 'linking' document validity periods). In the industry, this has already led to discrepancies: part of the market participants focuses on the federal pause, part — on the actual practice of DDS and local inspection bodies. SB 442 in this sense stands apart: it is not 'fulfilling a federal order,' but an attempt to enshrine a stricter control model in state law specifically for non-citizens, including a five-year cap and mandatory retesting.
For Georgia's freight market, the initiative is sensitive in several directions.
Automatic license revocation upon visa expiration is an expected logic, but the five-year limit looks like a mechanism that can 'knock out' drivers from circulation even while maintaining legal status. Companies with a significant share of non-citizen drivers in their staff may potentially experience higher turnover 'for administrative reasons.' Unlike the usual renewal cycle, retesting means not just a visit to DDS, but a full-fledged exam process with possible attempts and delays.
The practical effect depends on how exactly the automatic revocation will be implemented: whether it will be accompanied by advance notifications, how quickly immigration document data will be updated in systems, and how synchronously this will work with carriers' personnel circuits. Any gap here is a sudden denial of access to a route and disruption of planning.
From a compliance perspective, carriers will have to more accurately and frequently verify the validity periods of employees' immigration documents and link this to internal work schedules, medical examinations, MVR, and insurance requirements. If the bill in its current form becomes law, the 'risk point' will expand: control will be required not only on visa expiration dates but also on the five-year 'burnout' date of the CDL, which may not coincide with usual personnel cycles.
For companies with a multi-state operational model, the question of mobility will arise. CDL is a state document, but the driver labor market is regional. A stricter regime in Georgia can redistribute the flow of applicants to neighboring jurisdictions or, conversely, intensify competition for U.S. citizens and residents if some non-citizens avoid tying themselves to a Georgia license.
Mandatory retesting of theory and driving every five years for a certain category is a predictable increase in load on sites, examiners, and schools. For carriers, this materializes as driver downtime waiting for a skills test slot, the need to allocate equipment for the exam, and the risk that a driver will not pass on the first attempt and fall out of schedule for days or weeks. In conditions where many companies are already balancing between the cost of replacing a driver and the cost of retention, such 'administrative downtimes' become another item of indirect expenses.
Proponents of tightening usually emphasize oversight and safety, linking the initiative to the need for stricter status and qualification checks. Opponents — in the industry and among human rights groups — usually point to the potential blow to staffing and the risk of a discriminatory effect, where a separate group of drivers faces requirements not imposed on others.
An important practical detail: even if the bill passes, the market will look not only at the text but also at how it will be administered. How quickly status data will be updated in state systems, how often erroneous 'auto-revocations' will occur, what appeal and recovery procedures will emerge, and who will bear the costs if a driver is formally legal but the system 'sees' otherwise. These questions usually determine the fate of such norms at the level of real operational pain for carriers.
Currently, SB 442 is at an early stage: the document has been submitted to the Georgia Senate Public Safety Committee. For the industry, the nearest markers are the appearance of possible amendment texts (if the bill begins to be 'softened' or, conversely, expanded), the position of DDS on the feasibility of the automatic mechanism, as well as the reaction of carrier associations and major employers in the state.
Separately, market participants will compare Georgia's possible requirements with the federal agenda on non-domiciled CDL, where uncertainty remains due to the judicial suspension: state and federal desynchronization almost always leads to compliance being built according to the strictest scenario to avoid out-of-service and insurance claims already on the line.
