November 24, 2021
Missouri Veteran Suing over Mask Mandate Challenges TSA’s Revocation of Pre-Check Status
Action Marks Agency’s 2nd Illegal Retaliation
Against Flyers Petitioning to End Forced Masking
Nov. 24, 2021
By LUCAS WALL
WASHINGTON – A disabled Missouri veteran asked a federal appeals court Wednesday to order the Transportation Security Administration to reinstate his Pre-Check membership, which the agency suspended three weeks after he sued it to overturn the Federal Transportation Mask Mandate. Pre-Check allows known travelers who register with TSA to use expedited airport security lanes.
Anthony Eades, 40, of Warsaw, Missouri, has been a Pre-Check member for five years. He’s part of a group of 13 disabled flyers plus a former flight attendant from nine states and the District of Columbia who filed six lawsuits Oct. 19 around the country charging TSA with exceeding its legal authority by continuing to extend a requirement that all public-transportation passengers don face masks.
Then on Nov. 10, the agency sent him a letter stating “As a result of recurrent checks and based on a comprehensive background check, TSA was unable to determine that you pose a sufficiently low risk to transportation and national security to continue to be eligible for expedited airport security screening through the TSA Pre-Check Application Program.”
In the motion filed today with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Eades wrote he has not flown since March 14 because he can’t wear a mask due to injuries suffered while serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq.
“This action represents illegal retaliation against me for suing TSA to stop the FTMM,” Eades declared. “I have not been arrested or charged with any crimes. The only thing I have done to attract TSA’s attention since my Pre-Check membership was reapproved May 27 was file this lawsuit.”
Eades asks the Court of Appeals to order TSA “to immediately restore my Pre-Check membership. Finally, the Court should direct TSA to show cause within 10 days of the entry of an order why it should not be sanctioned and/or held in contempt for illegally retaliating against me for bringing this lawsuit seeking review of its ultra vires FTMM orders in direct disdain for this Court’s constitutional and statutory authority to consider challenges to agency actions.”
This marks the second time TSA has unlawfully retaliated against a disabled American suing to block the mask mandate. The agency placed Michael Faris, 34, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, on a terrorist watchlist two days after he filed suit Oct. 19 challenging the mask requirement. Faris filed an emergency motion Oct. 27 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit demanding he be removed from the watchlist. Three days later, TSA did just that.
“TSA’s blatant act of retaliation against a disabled veteran comes as no surprise to me,” Faris said. “It is just one of its many ‘determinations’ in the agency’s long list of illegal actions against disabled passengers. The fact that TSA feels it may treat disabled passengers this way, much less a Purple Heart veteran, should be cause for the abolishment and privatization of the agency. As the first disabled passenger who was retaliated against by the TSA in reference to these lawsuits, I know firsthand the feeling of disgust and disrespect that Mr. Eades is experiencing.”
Eades called TSA’s action annulling his Pre-Check membership because he’s suing the agency “the absolute worst form of vengeance against a citizen exercising my First Amendment right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. … In no way has Congress authorized TSA to declare passengers litigating against its orders a ‘risk to transportation and national security,’ potential terrorists, or otherwise subject them to secondary security screening. By retaliating against me, TSA violates my First Amendment right to petition.”
Faris, the first TSA retaliation victim, said the Biden administration claims it wants to unify the country, yet its executive agencies are willfully participating in segregation practices against Americans with disabilities.
“TSA and the airlines are cowardly hiding under this notion that we pose a threat to the aviation system when in fact, many of us have been using this mode of travel for half a decade or more as model passengers,” he said. “TSA and all airlines should be forced to immediately cease and desist any refusal to board disabled passengers in relation to their inability to wear masks, as the law already plainly states. No veteran should ever be treated this way by the very government he took an oath to defend.”
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I refuse to fly TSA and any form of transport that does not meet my standards. I live and breathe the way god made me with out a mask. This is government trying to strip our will and freedom. All government’s freedom under god.