FEDEX has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Commerce to stop it from enforcing certain export restrictions against the company, the Memphis logistics giant announced Monday.

FedEx didn’t name Chinese tech giant Huawei specifically in its statement, but the filing comes after the company has botched Huawei-related shipments on at least two occasions.

Huawei has had U.S. government restrictions placed on it due to “national security concerns.” It and affiliated companies have been placed on a U.S. “Entity List” as part of Export Administration Regulations (EAR), which restrict them from doing business with domestic firms.

FedEx said in the lawsuit that the entity list “imposes an overbroad, disproportionate burden” on the company, burdens that come from the EAR not including a common carrier exemption, it said. A large portion of international shipments go through domestic FedEx facilities like its Memphis hub, it said, meaning the items become subject to those restrictions during transit.

FedEx further argued in a statement that the EAR violate the rights to due process of common carriers like FedEx under the Fifth Amendment. The regulations “unreasonably hold common carriers strictly liable for shipments that may violate the EAR without requiring evidence that the carriers had any knowledge of any violations,” FedEx said.

“This puts an impossible burden on a common carrier such as FedEx to know the origin and technological make-up of contents of all the shipments it handles and whether they comply with the EAR,” the company said.

The lawsuit was filed about a month after FedEx “misrouted” documents from Huawei and just a few days after FedEx returned to sender a Huawei mobile phone being shipped between PCMag employees.

The filing says the company wants an order blocking the U.S. Department of Commerce from enforcing certain EAR provisions against FedEx as necessary to address the company’s concerns.

FedEx said it was charged with 53 violations related to an EAR provision from the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security in 2017 despite its investment in compliance. The two parties eventually settled, with FedEx paying a US$500,000 penalty plus interest and undergoing external audits, per the suit.

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday.

(SD-Agencies)