Justice Clarence Thomas blasted the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday for blocking Florida’s lawsuit against two blue states that gave a commercial driver’s license to an immigrant who later caused a deadly crash.
The Supreme Court declined to hear Florida’s lawsuit against California and Washington over undocumented truck drivers, with both Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito dissenting. Thomas wrote in his dissent that he doubts the court “has discretion to refuse to hear cases within its exclusive original jurisdiction.”
“This Court has exclusive original jurisdiction over [Florida’s] suit because it involves one State suing other States,” Thomas wrote. “Article III establishes that ‘[i]n all Cases . . . in which a State shall be [a] Party, the supreme Court shall have [original] Jurisdiction.’ … Congress has made our original jurisdiction ‘exclusive’ in ‘all controversies between two or more States,’ meaning that no other court can hear this case.”
“‘We have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given, than to usurp that which is not given,’” according to Thomas’ dissent. “‘If this Court does not exercise jurisdiction over a controversy between two States, then the complaining State has no [judicial] forum in which to seek relief.’”
Thomas also asserted in his dissent that “the only [statute] addressing this Court’s jurisdiction over these kinds of cases nowhere contemplates a process of discretionary review,” adding “nonetheless, this Court has adopted a discretionary approach to its exclusive original [jurisdiction] based on ‘policy judgments that are in conflict with the policy choices that Congress made in the statutory text specifying the Court’s original jurisdiction.’”
Florida’s lawsuit comes after three people died in an Aug. 12, 2025 crash on the Florida Turnpike after an undocumented truck driver, Harjinder Singh, made an illegal U-turn, The Miami Herald reported.
“Law enforcement soon discovered that Singh, an Indian who had crossed the Mexican border illegally, likely could not read the road signs,” Thomas wrote further. “After the crash, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration tested Singh’s English [proficiency]: It found that Singh could not correctly answer most of its verbal questions and that he could identify only one out of four highway signs.”
“An illegal alien who cannot read English road signs cannot drive an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer,” Thomas continued.
Thomas also said that “crashes like Singh’s are disturbingly common.”
The Trump administration moved in September 2025 to tighten eligibility requirements for commercial driver’s licenses following a series of fatal crashes involving foreign truck drivers. In February, the administration also introduced new regulations aiming to prevent unqualified foreigners from driving commercial vehicles, the Daily Caller News Foundation first reported.
Republican Indiana Sen. Jim Banks wrote in a Feb. 27 X post that “American truck drivers are being ripped off by shady carriers hiring illegal immigrants to drive down wages.”
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