C.H. Robinson Is Removing Carriers Based on Safety Scores. A Supreme Court Decision Two Weeks Ago May Explain Why.

A notice has been going out to carriers in the C. H. Robinson network, and it is worth reading carefully because of what may sit behind it. The message, branded under C. H. Robinson and titled “Changes to carrier eligibility,” tells the recipient that their company “exceeds intervention thresholds for C. H.

Robinson’s scoring model based on data from the FMCSA.” Effective immediately, the notice states, the account is moved to non-certified status until BASIC scores improve. The carrier loses access to book loads on Navisphere Carrier and through their aligned representative immediately. Loads in transit deliver and get paid as normal.

Existing payables process in full. But the ability to book new freight is gone until the safety scores come back into the broker’s acceptable range. On its face, this reads as a safety policy update.

Read against what happened at the Supreme Court two weeks before these notices started circulating, it invites a different question: is the freight brokerage industry beginning to reprice carrier risk in real time, because the legal consequences of getting that risk assessment wrong just changed permanently? C. H.

Robinson has not publicly stated that the eligibility change is connected to the Supreme Court ruling, and the company has not publicly announce additional changes.

What follows is an analysis of the ruling, the notice, and the timing; and readers should weigh the connection as a strong inference supported by sequence and mechanism, not as a stated company position. CHR is referring me to the FMCSA in order to raise my safety score before they can work with me and a lot of other carriers again.

I have 0% OOS/Violations – makes no sense. thewastedyears (@Thewastedyea) May 29, 2026 What the Supreme Court Actually Did on May 14 To understand why the C. H. Robinson notice is drawing attention, you have to understand Montgomery v.

Caribe Transport II, LLC and the decision is more consequential for smaller carriers than almost anything else that has happened in freight this year. On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously, 9-0, that state-law negligent hiring claims against freight brokers are not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion. Justice Kavanaugh concurred, joined by Justice Alito. There was no dissent. The case started with a 2017 crash on Interstate 70 in Illinois. Shawn Montgomery had pulled his vehicle onto the shoulder when a tractor-trailer operated by Caribe Transport II veered off the road and struck him. Montgomery lost his leg.

He sued the driver, the carrier, and the freight broker that arranged the load — C. H. Robinson. His claim against the broker was specific: C. H. Robinson negligently selected Caribe Transport when it knew or should have known the carrier posed a safety risk.

Montgomery pointed to Caribe’s conditional FMCSA safety rating, with documented deficiencies in driver qualification, hours of service, vehicle maintenance, and crash rate. For years, brokers defeated claims like this with one argument: federal preemption.

The FAAAA bars state laws “related to a price, route, or service” of a broker, and brokers argued that negligent selection claims fell under that bar. The district court agreed. , the Seventh Circuit agreed then the Supreme Court took the case and reversed everyone. Barrett’s reasoning was direct.

The FAAAA contains a safety exception that preserves “the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles.” Requiring C. H. Robinson to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier, Barrett wrote, “concerns motor vehicles; most obviously, the trucks that will transport the goods.”

That puts the negligent hiring claim inside the safety exception, which saves it from preemption. The shield brokers had relied on for years was gone in a unanimous decision that legal analysts described as fitting its core reasoning “on a napkin.”

The practical effect: a broker can now be sued in state court for negligently selecting an unsafe carrier, and the case can proceed on the merits rather than being dismissed early on preemption grounds.

In an environment where nuclear verdicts against trucking-related defendants regularly exceed $10 million, that exposure is significant even for a company the size of C. H. Robinson. From Reddit: an email screenshot from CHR to a carrier. I appears 3PLs are actively culling their own carrier base that doesn’t meet revised safety thresholds.

A safety induced capacity crunch. pic. twitter. com/o044E1lczd— Thomas Wasson (@ThomasWasson) May 29, 2026 Why the Ruling and the Notice Appear Connected The C. H. Robinson carrier eligibility notice does not mention Montgomery v. Caribe.

The connection, if there is one, is in the mechanism — and the mechanism is worth laying out plainly so readers can judge it for themselves. The Supreme Court decision means a broker’s carrier selection process is now a potential