Say Austin airport in Texas, Reagan airport in Washington DC, etc. Are they the jurisdiction of their local states/regional governments, or of federal laws?
Like, if something happened at an airport, does local state/city law apply, or national federal law? (with the exception of things like immigration, customs, etc. which are always federal.)
Checking the Wiki entry for Los Anteles International Airport, I find this tidbit:
The airport is operated by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), a branch of the Los Angeles city government, that also operates Van Nuys Airport for general aviation.
Airports are under the jurisdiction of their local governments and state law generally applies. However, the federal government does have jurisdiction over crimes committed against airplanes and airports that are used in interstate commerce, under 18 USC §32. So an ordinary crime that happens to occur at an airport would be prosecuted by the state, but a crime specifically related to the airport itself is more likely to attract federal interest.
In the US, airports are generally owned by the municipality they’re in or by a state/quasi state agency or authority. That’s where the similarities end. From there, the exact type of agency and how its structured gets really complex.
On the easy end of the scale, O’Hare and Midway are owned and operated by the City of Chicago (Dept of Aviation). I believe Los Angeles and San Fransisco are the same.
Boston Logan (and two other Massachusetts airports) is owned and operated by the Massachusetts Port Authority, an autonomous state agency. Their airports are essentially their own towns - the municipality has no primary jurisdiction on the airport. The Massachusetts State Police provides law enforcement on those airports, not the hosting city or town.
Kennedy, Newark, LaGuardia, and Teterboro are owned and operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a quasi state, autonomous government agency. PANYNJ has its own police force.
The only exceptions to that are the two Washington DC airports - Reagan and Dulles - and to an extent, Atlantic City airport. Those airports are owned by the FAA, they’re federally owned airports. The DC airports are operated by the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority (MWAA) on a long term lease agreement. That happened in the mid 1980s I believe. Prior to that the FAA ran them. Atlantic City if I recall is also owned (or mostly owned) by the FAA but is operated by/leased to the South Jersey Transportation Authority. Law enforcement at all three of those airports is turned over to the states or city.
As folks above have said. Which “something” are you considering?
The scenario I was envisioning was where something is legal at the state/local level, but not at federal (or vice versa.)
Using drugs as an example - there are some places where cannabis, shrooms, etc. are locally legal. But such drugs remain uniformly illegal on the federal level. So if someone at Denver airport packs a bag of legal-in-Colorado drugs for his flight to some other state/city where such drugs are also legal, and TSA officers take a gander at what’s in his bag - is the passenger legal because Denver/Colorado allow such drugs, or is he illegal because federal law doesn’t allow it?
(Since others have replied that Denver and other airports are state controlled, I’m guessing he’s fine.)
Federal Law always apply in conjunction with state laws. That is the Supremacy Clause in concert with dual-sovereignty. As others have said, airports are owed by local governments or are private. The confusion probably comes in that in an airport, you have federal law enforcement (TSA) enforcing federal laws.
And therefore they’re also illegal in every state. Under the current laws, federal law enforcement can arrest someone for possession of marijuana anywhere in the US. Due in part to the large number of states that have legalized marijuana, the federal law enforcement agencies have mostly chosen not to enforce those laws, but that’s an agency policy decision, that could be changed at any time.
Keep in mind that the federal government doesn’t want to police minor stuff unless it absolutely has to. Your local federal prosecutor is interested in drug kingpins and terrorists and bank robbers and wire fraud, not a joint that someone forgot to take out of their suitcase. This was true even before states started to legalize marijuana; if you got caught at the border with a small amount of pot, they’d just call the local cops on you and have you dealt with through that system. Now that it’s legal in some states, the border authorities have civil fines they can give out in those states, because the federal prosecutors still aren’t interested.
TSA screeners are not law enforcement officers and will call the airport police/local police if necessary There are some TSA employees who are law enforcement officers ( like air marshals and investigators ) but not the screeners.