The Bush administration proposed legislation in February that would convert the current hours-of-service regulations into statutory law, a move that would keep the rule in effect despite a federal court’s action to overturn them.

The White House also is proposing to limit the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s jurisdiction over driver health to conditions that would cause death or serious injury, FMCSA Administrator Annette Sandberg said.

The appeals court ruled in July that FMCSA had failed to consider driver health to the extent the court interpreted its obligation to do so.

Speaking at the American Trucking Associations’ Winter Leadership Meeting in Washington, D.C., Sandberg said the failure of Congress to enact a highway programs authorization bill last year presented an opportunity to end the litigation initiated by Public Citizen and its allies. In November, Sandberg proposed that the Bush administration ask Congress to make the hours-of-service regulations permanent. “As of [Feb. 7], that has been approved,” she told ATA’s board of directors.

Under the Bush administration’s new highway bill proposal, the rules issued in April 2003 and implemented in January 2004 would be “adopted and confirmed as fully legalized, as if it had, by prior Act of Congress, been specifically adopted on the date that rule (including the subsequent technical amendment) was originally issued.”

The proposed legislation would, however, give FMCSA authority to make changes to the rules in the future through the normal rulemaking process.