A victory for both SoCal ports

The timing of the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to overturn a ban on drayage owner-operators at the Port of Los Angeles could not have been better.

As we have been reporting recently, the inbound cargo volumes at Southern California ports has been trending downward, and one may suspect that the contentious political environment may have contributed to this

It is heartening to learn that the Port of LA may soon be following the example set by neighboring Long Beach on a more progressive solution to cleaning the air in the region.

But the battle may not be entirely over. While the American Trucking Association challenged the port’s authority to enact and enforce a ban on owner-operators, the court did uphold several comparatively minor regulatory port requirements relating to truck parking, financial capability, maintenance and placard requirements.

“We are evaluating the rest of the court’s ruling,” said ATA Chief Counsel Robert Digges, “while the court upheld our argument on the central issue, we will be deciding whether a further appeal is warranted.  We firmly believe the other challenged provisions of the Concession Agreement should have been preempted as explained in a strong dissent by the panel’s Chief Judge.  Should we appeal, that dissent will be very helpful to our effort.”