There is no legal requirement to show id or answer any questions to establish identification before flying. In other words there is no extra work required by law which the fee would cover.
This is just a way to compel compliance and to push the agenda for ID with higher documentary requirements, ultimately to deny the vote.
...The courts have repeatedly struck down limits on domestic travel over the
past couple hundred years.
In fact, the $45 "fee" is an acknowledgment that you aren't required to have
special documents to travel within the US. Otherwise, they just wouldn't let
you travel.
So instead, they're making more security theater and punishing you if you
don't comply with their demands...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46864182
It's absolutely not just enhanced physical screening.
They can't detain you (if you're not otherwise some kind of suspect, and you're not trying to assault them or sprint past security or anything), but they don't let you fly.
I mean, I know you're right, and I know you will always lose if you try, but I don't understand the legal basis.
The ruse here is to pretend like the property owner is agreeing with TSA because TSA forced them to this agreement by government act. But that is just the government trying to have their cake and eat it by forcing someone to do something and then pretending it is a private act which isn't bound to the constitutional right to not have to answer additional questions.
The government can absolutely pass laws prohibiting you from entering a privately owned location. There is no constitutional right of access to private property.
And more specifically, the commerce clause of the constitution allows the government to regulate air travel, which means regulating airports. The fact that they're privately owned doesn't change anything. If a private airport owner allowed you to proceed through security, they'd be breaking the law.
There's no public access doctrine for airports the way there is for streets or parks.
You clear seem to wish it was otherwise. But it's easy to do the research to understand where the authority comes from and why it's entirely constitutional.
If the difference between access and not having access is relinquishing your civil rights, then the reason for denial is exercising your civil rights. Those are explicitly protected. So while you're right they could make a law that says 'no one on the plane' they cannot make a law that says "everyone on the plane except those who won't give up their 4th or 5th amendment rights not to answer additional questions."
There have been prior SCOTUS cases narrowly allowing asking name, DOB, addresses, as well as inspection of your items during certain inspections, but this is something entirely different beyond that asking further probing questions about your identity.
And that brings us back to the tagline of the article:
The law, as written, is clear: You have the right to fly without ID, without paying a $45 fee, and without answering questions
You are already free to go that other way (towards the street), but not necessarily free to go the way you want.
Cities don't own restaurants either but can fine them and close them if health inspections fail, because there's a law for that.
The legal basis is the federal laws written specifically around airport security.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-107publ71/html/PLAW...
Whether they can then elect to stay is a different matter, I think.
But so what? How long would a person have to stand in a screening area before someone who properly represents the ownership of that space shows up and authoritatively tells them to GTFO, do you suppose?