Connor’s Law

Connor’s Law would add a federal English-language proficiency standard for drivers of commercial motor vehicles (CMVs). The bill amends title 49 to require CMV operators to read and speak English well enough to converse with the public, understand highway signs and signals, respond to official inquiries, and make entries on reports and records. If a driver is found noncompliant with this standard by an authorized enforcement officer, the driver would be declared out of service under the existing framework for regulating unsafe driving and noncompliance. The measure preserves existing out-of-service rules for cases not covered by the new provision and notes that the changes align with current federal regulations and NAOOC criteria. In short, the bill creates a formal, federally enforced English-proficiency requirement for CMV drivers and ties noncompliance to an out-of-service order, while maintaining other preexisting out-of-service mechanisms.