(i'll say i actually gravely dislike the TSA, but think this is clearly the right result)
"The majority holding is probably correct as a matter of statutory interpretation."
Yeah, agreed. Reading this statute, it's fairly clear it was not meant to apply here, but it does raise the sad issue of "we've separated these jobs enough to create a loophole".
If they were designated LEOs, they'd clearly fall under the statute, even when performing administrative searches.
By making them line employees with no officer authority, they've avoided this.
While i agree the dissent makes a good point, it's also unclear to me they should be able to make a federal torts case of this given the state of the world.
First, dissent is hand-wavy on this point:
'“By analogizing TSA searches to routine administrative inspections, my colleagues preclude victims of TSA abuses from obtaining any meaningful remedy for a variety of intentional tort claims,”"
They can and did file a claim with the TSA.
The TSA simply denied it.
You need more than them denying it to say "it's not meaningful".
IE you can't just wave your hand and say they denied it so it's not meaningful, you'd have to show data that says filing these claims is not producing meaningful results when it should.
Instead, they simply provide data that there have been less than 200 administrative complaints (out of 700 million screened!), and no data about how they have been resolved
(and if you aren't getting due process, you can in fact make out a claim about that!)
They also did settle the property damage claim.
Beyond that, while i generally think complaints should be resolvable through a sane process (hence my argument about the data on claims made to the TSA), i strongly disbelieve that every bad interaction with a TSA line employee should be actionable in federal court as a tort.
(i'm also not going to argue about the efficacy, etc of the TSA. As long as air travel remains not a fundamental right, the rest of this legal reality sadly comes along for the ride)
Here, they actually did what they were supposed to - they didn't start a fight, beat this person down, etc. Instead, they went to their supervising officer and said "we believe were were assaulted, please call the police"
There is apparently strong disagreement on the interaction that led to this happening, and the entire suit is about what happened after that (the arrest, etc).
I believe the result is correct as to these people, who did not actually arrest or prosecute them. That decision was made by others, based on review of evidence, etc.
They are not suing any of the people who made those decisions, claiming lack of evidence (i'm aware a bunch of them are immune, but not all of them) etc, they are suing the people that they had the bad interaction with.
They also could have asked the government for westfall certification (They didn't), which would let them sue the screeners personally.
All in all, i just don't see the badness in this ruling that others do.