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A federal judge has struck down as unconstitutional a truck tolling plan by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation that was challenged in a lawsuit by American Trucking Associations as specifically aimed at motor carriers traveling through the state.
“Because RhodeWorks fails to fairly apportion its tolls among bridge users based on a fair approximation of their use of the bridges, [it] was enacted with a discriminatory purpose, and is discriminatory in effect, the statute’s tolling regime is unconstitutional under the dormant Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution,” wrote District Judge William Smith in a Sept. 21 ruling.
“Plaintiffs’ request for a permanent injunction is granted, and RhodeWorks tolling system is enjoined.”
BREAKING: ATA and @RITrucking have prevailed over Rhode Island’s truck-only tolling scheme.
A federal judge has declared the #RhodeWorks scheme UNCONSTITUTIONAL. https://t.co/L1RpLzJUe1
— American Trucking (@TRUCKINGdotORG) September 21, 2022
ATA Present Chris Spear said in response to the ruling: “We told Rhode Island’s leaders from the start that their crazy scheme was not only discriminatory, but illegal.”
He added: “We’re pleased the court agreed. To any state looking to target our industry, you better bring your A-game … because we’re not rolling over.”
In his ruling Smith wrote that “tolling highways is [a] tricky and controversial business.”
Spear
“The need to raise money to fund construction and repairs of bridges must be balanced against the political reality that many local residents and business owners use those same corridors daily to get around the state,” the judge wrote in his 91-page ruling. “The solution they contrived — dubbed ‘RhodeWorks,’ the first and only of its kind in the United States — was to toll only large commercial trucks (or tractor-trailers) at various bridge locations along these major corridors. This plan had the obvious appeal of raising tens of millions of needed dollars from tractor-trailers while leaving locals largely unaffected.”
The lawsuit, filed in 2018 by ATA and two motor carriers, alleged that the Rhode Island Department of Transportation’s hotly contested tolling plan required out-of-state heavy trucks to pay nearly all of the tolls, while exempting state businesses, cars and intrastate motor carriers.
“This toll regime was designed to, and does in fact, impose discriminatory and disproportionate burdens on out-of-state operators and on truckers who are operating in interstate commerce,” ATA alleged in its complaint filed in Rhode Island federal district court.
The idea for the tolling plan dates to 2016, when the state’s General Assembly declared that 23% of Rhode Island’s bridges were structurally deficient and that “tractor-trailers cause in excess of 70% of the damage to the state’s transportation infrastructure, including Rhode Island bridges, on an annual basis.”
ATA disputed the state’s method of measuring wear and tear on Rhode Island roads.
The General Assembly also maintained that “a funding gap” existed between “the revenue needed to maintain all bridges in structurally sound and good condition and the annual amounts generated by current dedicated revenue sources.”
The trucks-only tolling system was part of then-Gov. Gina Raimondo’s broader RhodeWorks program, which has been projected to generate $4.7 billion to finance infrastructure projects.
In court documents, the state has denied that the tolls authorized under the RhodeWorks Act are, as plaintiffs have characterized them, a “truck toll regime.”
Alviti
The defendants also have denied that Raimondo intended to export the state’s tax burden, and have denied that Peter Alviti Jr., director of the Rhode Island DOT, the named defendant in the lawsuit, ever intended to place a burden disproportionately on out-of-state payers.
During the trial, both sides offered testimony from experts in support of their claims, and traded barbs in attempting to discredit each side’s expert testimony.
In his closing statements, ATA attorney Reginald Goeke of the law firm Mayer Brown said the so-called “consumption method” of tolling trucks based on the belief that trucks excessively damage roads is a violation of the Dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The Dormant Clause is intended to prohibit state legislation that discriminates against, or unduly burdens, interstate or international commerce.
“This is a discriminatory toll system,” Goeke said. “This is a toll system that is not fairly approximating the use of the facility. This is a system that was designed and intended to target out-of-state users for the purpose of funding Rhode Island’s bridges.”
“Your Honor, in the opening I said that the plaintiff’s case was focused on a what-if RhodeWorks tolling program, and not the actual tolling program,” countered Rhode Island DOT attorney John Tarantino of the law firm Adler Pollock & Sheehan P.C., in his closing arguments.
“Plaintiffs want you to second-guess the Legislature on how it determined to improve our roads — and the worst-in-the-nation’s bridges — following Congress’ authorization to toll the bridges on the interstate, which had been previously un-tolled.”
Tarantino added, “Congress said, yes, you can toll bridges on the interstate. It didn’t direct the state to toll all vehicles. It didn’t say you can only toll trucks, or not. There are more out-of-state Class 8-plus trucks traveling on roads and tolled bridges on the interstate than there are Rhode Island-based trucks.”
