Originally Posted by Efrem
...Since airlines are not legislatures, they can't make this illegal. All they can do is make it a violation of program rules. The punishment is limited to what they can do with their programs: confiscate miles, invalidate awards, close accounts. For many of us here, that's severe enough.
(Reportedly, under California law at least, it's against state law to use a ticket for carriage in violation of its terms and conditions. If that's correct, it is actually illegal to sell miles there, though I'm not aware of anyone being hauled into court for it.)
I wonder if this is a matter CA can regulate, especially where the travel is interstate and might involve other than residents of CA. It seems to be there might be tricky Constitutional (US) law questions in that. But if there have been no attempts to enforce such a provision of CA law or no judicial reviews of the law, then we wouldn't know with any confidence. (I expect The Terminator has too much on his plate these days to worry about the sale of frequent flyer miles/awards.)