With FMCSA issuing its final rule on Limited Term (non-domiciled) Commercial Driver License and Commercial Learning Permit holders, Oregon DMV made the decision to permanently end the program. Limited Term CDL and CLP are issued to people who are legally in the U.S., for a limited time, and who meet all the testing, English language proficiency, Oregon residency, and other criteria for commercial driving privileges. There are approximately 900 people in Oregon who hold these credentials

What to Know:

• In September, FMCSA adopted an interim rule that Oregon could not immediately meet. Oregon DMV, via emergency rulemaking, suspended the state's program. This allowed holders of these credentials to keep them until expiration, but they could not be replaced, renewed, etc.
• In late January, FMCSA issued DMV a preliminary notice of noncompliance and required the agency to mitigate by not issuing, renewing, or replacing any Limited Term credentials.
• In mid-February, FMCSA issued its final rule on the subject, which was essentially the same as the interim rule issued in September 2025.
• DMV has no way – under current state law and with existing systems – to meet that new federal rule.
• Failure to comply with federal regulations, or to mitigate errors found in a notice of noncompliance, can result in Oregon losing tens of millions of dollars in federal highway funding and eventually the decertification of Oregon's CDL program.

DMV initially planned to adopt a permanent rule at the March 12 OTC meeting allowing people who already hold these credentials to renew or replace them but not allow any brand new issuances.

Per DMV, recent federal actions make it impossible to continue this program without substantial risk to a large sum of federal dollars, as well as to the entire CDL program, which licenses about 100,000 commercial drivers of trucks, buses, etc.