Originally Posted by
PTravel
It appears to be. The decision draws a distinction between "programmatic" intent and screener's intent. It seems to suggest that, as long as the intent of the program falls within the constitutionally valid ambit of an administrative search, e.g. preventing WEI, the screener's intent in going further is irrelevant. However, the decision then goes on to examine the screener's intent in the specific instance. The net result would appear to be some very disturbing dicta, along with the 9th Circuit finding what is, for all intents an purposes, an abuse of judicial discretion on the part of the lower court judge for finding the screener not credible.
However, this decision still is confined to the question of finding contraband during the course of an administrative search and the contraband in question here was child pornography. There has always been a judicial gloss involving subjective morality applied to a variety of decisions and this case is probably an example of it. I'm not too concerned. I far more interested in the cases that challenge the AIT and the grope.
I read it to say that rummaging through people's stuff and then calling law enforcement is one more waste of time. Because the defendant can suppress the evidence at trial. And it is a sign to me that TSA doesn't mind wasting our money that they don't FORBID these fishing expeditions which only insure that they have to pay more staff to handle a given passenger volume. One more thing to *beep* the weary taxpayer off.
] In other words, an airport search remains a valid
administrative search only so long as the scope of the administrative search exception is not exceeded; “once a search is
conducted for a criminal investigatory purpose, it can no longer be justified under an administrative search rationale.”
United States v. $124,570 U.S. Currency, 873 F.2d 1240,
1246 n.5 (9th Cir. 1989). Thus, because TSA screeners are
limited to the single administrative goal of searching for possible safety threats related to explosives, the constitutional
bounds of an airport administrative search require that the
individual screener’s actions be no more intrusive than necessary to determine the existence or absence of explosives that
could result in harm to the passengers and aircraft. See id. at