Originally Posted by
jkhuggins
I'm not a lawyer, and I didn't stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night, so I won't even pretend to be able to site a relevant law.
However ... my completely uninformed speculation suggests that the law is silent on the issue. And as you and I have already demonstrated, we can read that silence in two different ways. There's no law requiring TSA to admit you if you don't answer, but there's no law requiring TSA to deny you admission, either. Which is why it would be interesting to see this adjudicated --- and (as has been pointed out upstream) why we'll probably never see it adjudicated, as TSA will find a way to settle out-of-court before that happens.
This states very well the state of airline security today. At one time we went to the airport with the expectation of traveling and the purpose of security was to find those people that presented a danger to the travelers or the aircraft. However, today, unless we can adequately prove that we are not a danger to our fellow travelers, we can be denied the ability to travel for no other reason than that of uncertainty.
They seem to be almost the same thing, but in application they are worlds apart.