BANGOR DAILY NEWS • February 21, 2022
A federal judge on Friday halted enforcement of a new law that would prevent foreign truck drivers from hauling logs harvested in Maine to other locations in the state. The Maine Forest Products Council, Pepin Lumber Inc. of Franklin County and one of its truck drivers asked that Maine officials not be allowed to enforce the new logging industry regulation, saying the law was unconstitutional. That argument prevailed in U.S. District Court. While Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. understood the state’s interest in protecting Maine’s workers and ensuring that employers do not hire foreign workers when U.S. workers are able and willing to do the job, he said Congress developed the H-2A visa program to deal with that as part of national immigration policy. Woodcock wrote that Maine’s law “serves as an obstacle to federal objectives and is preempted.”