TRI In The News
Virtual Strip Searches Still an Issue
From One News Now
Original article available here
A federal appeals court won't interfere with a challenge to the government's right to do virtual strip searches and full-body pat-downs at the nation's airports, and one attorney says that doesn't bode well for attempts to ensure transparency in government.
The Rutherford Institute filed an appeal on behalf of pilots and passengers who have to go through the advanced imaging screenings or highly invasive pat-down searches to board an airplane. Founder John Whitehead details that his firm sought reversal of district court judgments in Fourth Amendment lawsuits filed in 2010 challenging the constitutionality of the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) airport security screening policy.
"Well, it's really strange because what we're dealing with here is a so-called 'secret order' from the TSA, which the courts say they're applying, saying that they don't have jurisdiction over this case," he notes. "So, what we're looking at right now is re-filing it in another court, or possibly going up to the U.S. Supreme Court."
Whitehead finds the idea of a secret order from an agency keeping courts out of the TSA's business "very, very strange -- and more than that, frightening."
"Hopefully, we're going to try to seek and get some kind of information, some kind of discovery motions on what this secret order says," says the attorney. "But in a democracy, supposedly we have transparency in government -- and the frightening thing here is the courts are actually going along with it."
The Rutherford Institute plans to pursue the case on behalf of its clients and the general public. Clients include a cancer survivor who was groped at an airport, a man fondled by TSA agents, and two pilots who objected to going through body scanners.
