For nearly a decade, freight brokers in the United States operated with a legal protection few in the industry questioned: if one of their carriers caused a serious accident, the broker could invoke the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, the FAAAA, to block state negligence claims before they ever reached trial. It was a federal defense that functioned as an almost automatic shield. On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court eliminated it unanimously.
What happened
The case began on December 7, 2017, on Interstate 70 in Illinois. Shawn Montgomery, a truck driver, lost his leg when a tractor-trailer operated by Caribe Transport II veered off course and struck his stopped vehicle. The shipment had been arranged by C.H. Robinson, the largest freight broker in North America.
The lawsuit alleged that C.H. Robinson knew or should have known, that Caribe Transport carried a "conditional" safety rating from federal regulators at the time it was hired, with documented deficiencies in driver qualifications, hours-of-service compliance, and crash rates. The broker argued the state claim was preempted by the FAAAA. Lower courts agreed. The Supreme Court did not.
The opinion, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, was direct: requiring a broker to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier directly concerns the vehicles that will transport the goods, placing the claim within the FAAAA's safety exception. The ruling was 9-0. There was no dissent.
The standard that now applies and what it actually means
What the Court did not say matters as much as what it did. The ruling does not make brokers automatic insurers of every load they arrange. The legal standard that applies is ordinary care, the same standard already applied to motor carriers and most other industries.
The questions a jury can now consider are concrete: Did the broker review the carrier's safety history before dispatching the load? Did available data show conditional ratings, elevated crash rates, or inspection violations? Did a documented carrier selection process exist?
Justice Kavanaugh was explicit in his concurrence: brokers that act reasonably and select reputable carriers should be able to successfully defend these claims. This ruling does not penalize the broker who does their job well, it exposes the one who doesn't.
For brokers with robust vetting processes, audit trails, and documented carrier selection criteria, this ruling doesn't change how they operate. It confirms that the standard that always should have existed now has legal backing. Documentation is the difference between an exposed broker and a protected one.
How WTS reads this ruling
Montgomery v. Caribe Transport doesn't signal a shift in how responsible brokers operate, it signals that the market is finally catching up to the standard that always should have existed.
Carrier vetting was never meant to be a compliance checkbox. It's the core of what protects every shipment and every client relationship. Working exclusively with carriers that meet strict safety, compliance, and performance criteria and documenting that process at every step, isn't a response to a court ruling. It's what integrity in this industry looks like.
What this decision confirms is that brokers who built their business on price and convenience over carrier quality were operating on borrowed time. The legal landscape has now aligned with what responsible brokerage always looked like. For shippers evaluating who they trust to move their freight, the question has never been more relevant and the answer has never been easier to verify.