Originally Posted by stevenshev
This dude is an .... Airline travel is not an explicit or implicit constitutional right. It's the purchase of a private service. So long as they do not discriminate in the category of people to whom they provide the service, there is no Constitutional issue here. The airlines could easily make a regulation that any person wishing to travel must produce government issued identification, and this would not be discriminatory so long as this did not exclude any group of people (it does not). For someone so sure about constitutionality and his rights, it might do him some good to a) learn what the hell he's talking about and b) stop for a second to consider the consequences of gratuitously being an ....
Commercial passenger airline travel is not really "the purchase of a private service" when the door is guarded by federal security officers. It's not like Southwest (to take a random example) could say that effective tomorrow, its passengers will not be subject to TSA screening.
Commercial airline travel is a highly regulated industry from top to bottom--security screening, pilot and FA certification, dispatch, maintenance, traffic control, what activities passengers are and are not allowed to engage in when onboard an aircraft, etc. They are also in the interesting position of virtually being financed by the government these days via the PBGC, direct bailouts, loan guarantees, bankruptcy protection, etc.
There's really nothing "private" about air travel.