On Sunday, February 1, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began charging travelers without REAL ID $45 to fly.
This may come as a surprise, but no U.S. law requires you to show ID to get on a domestic flight—or pay the new $45 TSA fee.
It doesn’t matter if you have REAL ID or not. The law doesn’t mandate any ID.
Requests to supply ID before boarding a commercial flight began in 1996, not by act of Congress but by an order by then-President Clinton.
As described by Clinton’s counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, this idea was conceived overnight as a way to show that the government was “doing something” in response to a plane crash that turned out to have been caused by a faulty fuel tank, not terrorism.
Airlines and the TSA started asking for ID, but they couldn’t legally require it. Even according to the TSA’s website, if you do not show your ID, “you may still be allowed to fly.”
Crucially, the REAL-ID Act pertains only to which IDs are accepted by Federal agencies in circumstances where ID is required.
The Act did nothing to legally impose a new ID requirement where there wasn’t one already, such as for airline passengers.
Obstacles to legal challenges
When passenger John Gilmore tried to challenge airline demands for ID in court, his complaint was dismissed on the basis of TSA policies that said travelers were still allowed to fly without ID as long as they submitted to a more intrusive “pat-down” and search.
... continue reading