NRF to join ATA suit against SoCal truck plan

The world's largest retail trade association has filed legal papers requesting to join a trucking industry lawsuit against the Southern California ports trucking re-regulation plan.

The National Retail Federation, in its filing which included arguments supporting the American Trucking Associations lawsuit, is also asking the federal judge presiding over the suit to issue an injunction blocking the implementation of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles $2.4 billion truck plan. The ATA filed its suit July 28 with the federal Circuit Court in Los Angeles, and subsequently asked the judge to issue an injunction against the truck plan.

The NRF will formally ask the judge to join the case at a preliminary injunction hearing in the case on Sept. 8. The Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Coalition for Clean Air will also ask the judge at the hearing to join the case in support of the ports.

While the NRF filing supports the ATA lawsuit, it also includes additional arguments that the ports are attempting to regulate interstate commerce, a power reserved to the federal government in the U.S. Constitution, and other federal law.

That is why the framers wisely embedded in the Constitution numerous mutually reinforcing provisions and structural principles designed to preclude one state from taking advantage of the residents and industries of other states, the NRF brief says. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have lost sight of these principles and are improperly treating activities at those ports as purely local matters to be disposed of based on purely parochial interests.

The truck plan, which is to take affect Oct. 1, seeks to replace or retrofit the nearly 17,000 drayage trucks servicing the two ports. The plan involves three components:

   A progressive multiyear ban on older model trucks.

   A $35-per-TEU container tax to pay for the trucks.

   An accessing scheme that requires trucking firms wishing to continue working at the two ports after Oct. 1 to meet certain ports-defined criteria in order to receive a ports-generated access license.