Supreme Court Rules For Yellow In Registration Fight
A new truck registration system might help defuse the kind of conflict that recently brought Yellow Transportation and the state of Michigan before the Supreme Court.
In a Nov. 5 ruling, the court told Michigan that it erred in 1992 when it changed its policy on registration and charged Yellow $10 each for all of its trucks.
Michigan originally granted reciprocity under the Single State Registration System, based on the policies of the state where trucks were licensed. But in 1992 it said it would grant reciprocity based on where a trucking company is headquartered. Michigan had no reciprocity with Kansas, where Yellow is based, so it charged the company a $10 per truck registration fee. Yellow paid, under protest, and sued for a refund.
Lower courts in Michigan upheld Yellow, but the state Supreme Court reversed them, so the matter wound up this fall before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court ruled that, "States may not renounce or modify a reciprocity agreement so as to alter any fee charged or collected as of that date." Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the decision. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a consenting opinion.
The fight is not over, however. The Supreme Court remanded the case back to Michigan to dispose of other issues it did not consider in this decision.
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