TSA Set To Take Legal Action Against Texas Groping Ban

With a bill that would ban invasive TSA pat downs in Texas set to be heard by the state legislature on Friday, the federal agency has indicated that it will take legal action to prevent the law being implemented, indicating that the government could once again resort to threatening Texas with a blockade that would impose a de facto “no fly zone” over the state.

The House version of SB 29, a bill that would punish any TSA agent who “touches the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of the other person, including touching through clothing,” with a year in jail or a $4,000 fine, was initially shot down last month despite passing the Texas House unanimously after the Justice Department resorted to threats of financial terrorism in resolving to impose a federal blockade to prevent flights operating out of Texas airports.

The DoJ threat to impose a federal blockade against Texas has not been withdrawn, but Robert Mann Jr., president of R.W. Mann & Company, Inc., an airline industry consulting firm in Port Washington, New York, told Forbes that the threat was “not viable,” labeling the idea that the feds would shut down an entire state a “non-starter”.