State police are the legal authority in the airports however and this would be a state criminal law.

TSA agents aren't even cops, they don't actually have any real authority, they are basically pulled off the street, given a day of "memorize the procedures" and then they start molesting people. They don't have any justice of the peace powers/etc.

ALL of that falls to the state police which will have to abide by this law.

So long as the law passes, any passenger will be able to file state felony criminal charges against any TSA screener that does these sorts of things to them (as per the letter) without express written consent.

If the law passes, the TSA is going to have a lot of problems to deal with.

As further thought on the state/federal thing, one of the things people don't realize is that Congress hasn't even authorized these scanners/molestations. The last related laws were 300+ against.

Technically speaking, these scanners/molestations aren't even legally authorized. The last laws on the books required the TSA to have the Chief Privacy Officer solicit public comment and publish a privacy impact statement, and after they did that ... THEN go back to congress for final approval to authorize the use of the devices as a "final screening" device.

Given that congress itself hasn't approved this stuff and it is a wholly Executive Branch over-rule congress thing then what this issue reall is, is a "State vs Executive Branch" issue as the only court challenges on these things to date have been sided against the TSA, with avarice.

The status of things is this:


The Courts: Precedent at SC Indicates Against, Existing Rulings Face Jurisdictional Battles however actually rulings have been harshly against the TSA.

Congress: Last known votes indicate 300+ against.

States: More than half a dozen states working on very clear legislation that would criminalize TSA molestations, including Texas which is moving forward strongly and clearly.

Executive Branch: Obama/Napolitano/Pistole ... this is where this policy has come out of and they are the biggest advocates of it.

All available evidence basically indicates this whole thing is Obama Admin. vs Rest of Humanity.

It is a very odd situation, I truly never would have expected Obama to be so into these sorts of irrational, draconian, totalitarian things. I still don't really get why he's doing it.

My best guess is they think it is "politically smart" or something they can "look tough on" for political reasons ... but that argument goes out the door when Texas bullies them back (which they appear to be doing directly).