RichardKenner

No, it was the last two sentences of the majority opinion.

Yes, it does! In the absence of any definition of a term in the statutes, the courts often look to dictionaries because the general principle is that word have their plain meaning unless otherwise defined.

I don't believe that it's at all certain that the Concealing Identity statue is a "stop and identify law". I'm aware of at least one web site that considers it that (and I agree that Hiibel lists it as such), but that's not what the plain language of the statute says.

Moreover, Hiibel is inconsistent with other Fifth Amendment decisions on one important issue: it speaks as if the Fifth Amendment many only be cited if the particular answer that a person would give to a question would incriminate them, but a more accurate statement is that if there exists an answer that might incriminate the person, they may refuse to answer, whether or not that would be their answer. Were that not the case, you have the absurd result that you couldn't prove that you were able to assert the privilege without first implicating yourself as part of that proof!

Here, the police have Phil's boarding pass. Whether he gave it to them or not is irrelevant to the argument below. Now that they have it, there's the question of whether he's "concealing" his identity (meaning presenting a false identity). That would be a crime.

That's a very different situation from Hiibel. There, they were investigating an assault. Hiibel was stopped in connection with that assault (which, I believe, he did not commit). His name was not relevant to whether he commited that assault. Thus, there was no valid way in which giving his name could incriminate him in the assult.

Here, the stop is because of an alleged presentation of fraudulent ID (or, at the least, an issue involving ID). Hiibel doesn't apply here because his identity is relevant to the purpose of the stop and you can't make the same argument that his name couldn't incriminate him for that charge.

Also note that if you're correct that Phil was doing this to "Flex His Rights", then he most certainly didn't violate that statute since it requires "intent to obstruct the due execution of the law or with intent to intimidate, hinder or interrupt any public officer or any other person". Quite the contrary, the intent here was to "Flex His Rights"!