Originally Posted by
cbn42
That's not how law works. You can't just assume something is true because no court has "specifically" said otherwise.
While courts have ruled that there is a right to travel, they have not said that it includes the right to travel by any mode. To take an example, some people have challenged the practice of requiring driver's licenses and registration fees to drive. Courts have upheld those things because, while you have the right to travel, you could always walk or take the bus, and therefore requiring a driver's license doesn't infringe on your right to travel.
While this makes sense in a superficial way, one must consider the implications of broad application. TSA says they control my right o travel by air and invoke several means to enforce that, NFL for example. That is fine, I can take the train or drive. But, if my right to travel by air can be infringed upon, while not to travel by rail or bus? After all, if I am dangerous on a airplane with other passengers, I should be dangerous on a train or bus. I could always drive, but as said above, that privilege can be revoked for any of a number of reasons.
It boils down to this, allowing the power to revoke a means of travel for capricious or dubious reasons allows the power to revoke any means of travel. It just has to be done and the argued persuasively in front of a court.
I'll share a true story and it made quite a stir when it happened. I grew up in a very small town of 300 people. We had a town drunk. He would drive the 1/2 mile into town to get his mail and such. He would get stopped. He eventually lost his license. Reasonable. He started riding his lawnmower. He was arrested and fought it and won. The legislature changed the law so any motor vehicle was covered. So he bought a horse. Judges ruled the horse was a motor vehicle under the now vague statute. (He actually was quite dangerous on the horse as he could not control it.) He tried walking and was arrested for public intoxication. In the end, he just stayed home and had people bring him what he needed.
There is a point: a government that has the power to limit one mode of travel has the power to limit any mode.
Wally Bird makes this point in his use of citations. Absent a known and demonstrable danger to fellow travelers or the mode of transportation, it should be that the private contract into which I enter with a company to provide a travel service can not be arbitrarily or effectively canceled by government force, coercion or inaction.
That is how it should be. That is not how it is.