Originally Posted by
northpole999
That's a fair point. But nonetheless, federal law takes precedence over and supercedes all state and local law with respect to federal services. And it is simply illegal under federal law for a non-federal government entity to charge for better availability of to or otherwise restrict access to federal government provided services. Federal government services including TSA are, by law, available on an equal basis to all persons. The locals are simply not allowed to interfere without federal law authorizing them to do so.
I suspect there's some trolling going on here - or at least a lot of tough-guy-behind-a-keyboard talk mixed in with Internet Lawyer talk.
I know two things about the lines of authority in an airport: 1. They're complicated. 2. The people wearing maroon coats and managing line access did not wander in and take their posts on their own. They were hired by someone in a position of authority (the airport, the airline, a contractor, the TSA, whoever) and directed to stand in a spot and do a job.
Regardless of how well they're doing the job (or how poorly they're paid, or what country they're from, or their command of English, characteristics that seem to draw a disproportionate amount of attention from some FTers) they have been granted a certain amount of authority by someone else in a position to be granting authority, e.g. someone with more juice than you or I.
So I discourage flyers from adopting the "I don't have to listen to those maroon coats, I just pretend I don't hear them and walk on by" attitude. That may have worked once or twice or 10 times in your past, but inevitably it's going to end with you getting detained and publicly lectured by a cop (or group of cops) about how the rules indeed apply to you, too, despite your elite status or F ticket or annual spend. If you stick by your guns and lip off about how stupid airport employees, TSA workers, and police officers are, maybe you'll get yourself on a triple top secret list that you can't get yourself off of.
I'm not suggesting that we be a nation of sheep. I am suggesting that willfully ignoring certain airport employees with clearly delegated authority is excessively confrontational and asking for trouble.