A federal appeals court ruled that the Transportation Security Administration’s role in public safety is “so significant” that the judiciary should not create a remedy involving TSA agents who may violate the constitutional rights of passengers.
The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals deferred to Congress partly because the court contended Tuesday that many TSA employees are not law enforcement officers and therefore do not have training “on issues of probable cause, reasonable suspicion and other constitutional doctrines that govern law enforcement officers.”
“We, of course, do not suggest that TSA screeners should act with disdain for passenger rights or that they can escape all the consequences of their bad behavior,” wrote Judge Kent Jordan for a three-judge panel. “Discipline by the government should be swift and certain, when its employees’ actions warrant it. But, when it comes to creating judicial remedies, there must be a balancing of priorities, and “the proper balance is one for the Congress, not the judiciary, to undertake.””
At issue in Tuesday’s decision was a dispute arising from a passenger traveling with a heart monitor and watch inside PVC pipe that alarmed TSA officials.
Roger Vanderklok sought to fly from Philadelphia to Miami to compete in a half-marathon and traveled with the heart monitor and watch in a piece of PVC pipe in his carry-on luggage. The pipe with electronics inside it caused TSA to do a secondary screening, under TSA official Charles Kieser’s supervision.
Vanderklok said he told Kieser he would file a complaint against the agent because of his “disrespectful and aggressive” behavior, and Vanderklok said Kieser responded to his statement by calling Philadelphia police and alerting them to a bomb threat from Vanderklok.
The police arrested Vanderklok, who was acquitted of all criminal charges after the airport’s surveillance footage did not match the TSA agent’s story about what happened. Vanderklok then sued the TSA agent with other federal and local law enforcement officials.
In his opinion for the 3rd Circuit, Jordan noted “special factors” existed in the case that prompted the appeals court’s hesitation in ruling on the case. The threat potential to homeland security posed by airplanes and air travel clearly played a role in the federal appeals court’s thinking about how to resolve the dispute. Jordan wrote that matters of foreign policy and national security are “rarely” appropriate issues for the courts to become involved in and said, “In recognition of that, national security decisions, insofar as they relate to foreign relations and the military, have, to a large extent, been insulated from judicial review.”
