Texas Senate Continues the Stand Against the TSA

The Post-9/11 era ushered in a new wave of theatrical security labeled the Transportation Security Administration. This government agency, which seems to have hired more criminals than they caught, has worked with impunity with no regard to the unconstitutional search and seizure of personal property. With a zero success rate in capturing terrorists, the TSA has instead irratiated, humiliated, molested, and stole from the customers of air travel, all the while completed funded by you the tax payer.

Senator Patrick has filed SB 20. This bill is a companion bill to the Texas State House bill HB 80 introduced by Representative Simpson.

This piece of legislation reads, “A person who is a public servant commits an offense if the person: while acting under color of the person’s office or employment:

A) intentionally subjects another person to mistreatment or to arrest, detention, search, seizure, dispossession, assessment, or lien that the actor [he] knows is unlawful:

B) intentionally denies or impedes another person in the exercise or enjoyment of any right, privilege, power, or immunity, knowing the actor’s conduct is unlawful; or

(C) intentionally subjects another person to sexual harassment” will be subject to prosecution if, “the defendant was, at the time of the alleged offense, acting under the color of federal law.”

The duties of the State’s Attorney General, “with the consent of the appropriate local county or district attorney, shall take any actions necessary on behalf of the state to defend the validity of the statute.”

Senator Patrick has been in a long fight against the TSA. In 2011, an anti-TSA groping bill failed to get enough votes from other fellow senators, even though it was publicly popular. He had received threats from the Federal Government that the Texas airports would be shut down. Senator Patrick was quoted in the Texas Tribune, “Patrick blamed the failure of the bill on Dewhurst. “When you stand on the Senate floor and the president of the Senate calls the bill up, he’s not supposed to be working against the bill while you’re debating it,” Patrick said. “This was a case of the federal government bullying Texas, and apparently they bullied the lieutenant governor.””

But we have seen this bullying before with Real-ID mandates. As Michael Boldin reports, in The Feds Huff and Puff. And Back Down Once Again that if you get enough states to say no, the federal government has no way enforce their unconstitutional actions, laws, and coming soon to a state near you, the TSA.

ACTION ITEMS

If you are a Texas resident and are worried about the unconstitutional search and seizures conducted by the TSA and the Federal Government bullying Texas State Sovereignty, then please contact your state senator here.

Also please visit the Texas State Tenth Amendment Center here.

Join the Texas Tenth Amendment Center here.

If you are not a Texas resident but would like to tell the Federal Government that the TSA is not welcome in your state, please see the Travel Freedom Act in the Tenth Amendment Center’s Model Legislation page here.