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Old Aug 10, 2011, 12:32 pm
  #13  
Boggie Dog
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: DFW
Posts: 28,010
Originally Posted by 4nsicdoc
Repeat after me; it is not a fine. Fines are adjudicated by a real judge. It is a "civil penalty proposed under Chapter 49 of the U. S. Code." And the TSA is about as effective in collecting these penalties as they are in catching terrorists. The procedure is that they will mail, by Certified mail, a Notice of Proposed Certificate Action which will state what they say you did wrong and what they want you to pay. You then have some choices. You can ignore the letter for more than 15 days, in which case the proposal becomes final and is an Order for Civil Penalty. Or, you can send them a check for the full amount and that will end the matter. What I have found is the best option is to request either an in person or telephonic
"informal conference" with the TSA Staff Attorney, who is probably a puppy lawyer, just not as loveable, and who, in line with the TSA motto of "We're not happy until you're not happy, unless you make it easy on us and then we'll both be happy" will accept just about any compromise in order to avoid having to do real lawyer work in getting ready for and appearing for a hearing in front of an Administrative Law Judge, who is usually a former government lawyer who was so incompetent that he was Peter Principled upstairs. Or you can put even more pressure on the poor TSA attorney by just immediately requesting a hearing. In that case the TSA attorney will usually fold like an origami albatross and accept anything in compromise.Any of these options (except mailing the check)keeps you, at least temporarily, from having to pay a cent. By the way, if you don't like the Order, you can appeal to the "TSA Decision Maker" which, of course, assumes they can find someone in the organization who can actually make a decision. And you can appeal that decision to the appropriate Circuit Court of Appeals. If you assume the worst and that eventually a final order is issued saying "Yeah, you screwed up. Pay $x.xx." you can still tell the TSA to go pound sand. They have no collection authority whatsoever. The poor by this time frazzled and worn out TSA lawyer has to ask the TSA Deputy Chief Counsel for Civil Enforcement to please, pretty please, try to talk the Attorney General into finding a U S Attorney who might be interested in collecting the civil, I repeat, civil, penalty. The most common US Attorney response is going to be, "You want me to do what!?" They have much bigger fish to fry, like the terrorists that real law enforcement has caught in spite of the bumblings of the TSA. Or John Gotti. Or running for elected office. US Attorneys are political appointees who wouldn't relish having undesireables like the TSA as clients.
In short, a civil penalty is usually a toothless threat, used by blustering tin badge wearing bullies.
And, by the way, if you win a CP action, the TSA very well might have to pay all of your attorney's fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act. They have to front all the costs for court reporters, ALJ travel expenses and staff attorney expenses in all cases.
If a person just refused to pay such a fine could TSA place the person on a Do Not Fly list?
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