Opinion ID: 2764193
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Resuming Reliance on HHMDs

Text: Ruskai suggests that TSA could simply use HHMDs (and perhaps a limited follow-up pat-down) to confirm that the only offending metal on her person is in her joints--just as it did prior to 2010. In particular, she emphasizes that this must be a reasonable alternative, because it is the screening approach taken in several Canadian airports that the U.S. government has included in the preclearance program. As to the foreign preclearance airports, the government contends that it has not yet fully completed the process of certifying that the Canadian airports to which petitioner refers provide a fully adequate level of security screening. (Of course, the government seems to allow passengers to fly into the United States after such screenings, and so must consider their procedures at least minimally adequate.) Regardless, foreign airports involve additional legal and political exigencies. In our view, in deciding how to allocate its limited resources, TSA may reasonably 6 Of course, a different situation would be presented should TSA change its program by abandoning its efforts to expand the use of these tools. -25- choose not to require foreign airports to use all U.S. procedures without compromising as a constitutional matter its ability to require somewhat more stringent procedures domestically. In any event, use of HHMDs is simply not an alternative means of finding nonmetallic weapons. Rather, in proposing this alternative, Ruskai is simply repeating her scope-of-search argument that TSA has no legitimate reason to search her for nonmetallic weapons. We have rejected that argument because TSA has reason to search every passenger for nonmetallic weapons.