But a question would arise if a common carrier can do this. I’m sure a court would say that a guy who punched a flight attendant and called her a bitch has sufficiently acted poorly such that he can be banned from the airline. But as was said above, this gives the power to a common carrier to be petty and ban you just because you had a bad day one time. Yes, it’s not cool, but you see in on this board even, and I have been guilty of it. That doesn’t mean that in their irreversible judgment, neither I nor my family can use their flights which is necessary to permit in modern commerce.
Compelled speech is unconstitutional. For very good reason.
An airline is a business, and businesses have the right to refuse service to anyone, for any reason (provided they are not violating discrimination laws). If one airline has an incident with an unruly passenger, they can refuse to provide service to that person in the future, right? Like if an unruly fan at a sports stadium dumps his beer on a player from the visiting team - the stadium/team can ban that person from attending going forward.
Where this all starts to get messy is when that person (on the airplane) is banned from flying the one airline, so instead flies on another, and the next airline has an incident with that person, they will ask why the first airline did not notify them. If the airlines start sharing this info, then IMHO it becomes a new ball game. As @Riemann is pointing out, the airlines may make arbitrary and uneven decisions, outside of a court of law.
I am fine if one airline refuses to do business with someone who is an ass, but I think it crosses a line when they share that info to other airlines. Yes, I would love to see these a-holes suffer and not be able to fly for a while, but I think a national ‘do-not-fly’ list for non-terrorists is going to get messy, legally. If part of their court-issued punishment is not being able to fly, that would be OK.
It’s all well and good that United has put that in a contract, but… other than for ease of administration, did it need to? Understanding of course that the notion of a “common carrier” has a common law origin, federal statutes would suggest that the right to avail oneself of a common carrier’s services—even if well behaved upon appearance—are not absolute. For instance, there’s 47 U.S. Code § 202 - Discriminations and preferences:
(a)Charges, services, etc.
It shall be unlawful for any common carrier to make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities, or services for or in connection with like communication service, directly or indirectly, by any means or device, or to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, class of persons, or locality, or to subject any particular person, class of persons, or locality to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage.
Bolding mine. What is “undue”, "unreasonable ", or “unjust” discrimination? Is it undue, unreasonable, or unjust to refuse to serve someone who has demonstrated a history of dangerous misbehavior while using a like service in the past?
Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not a huge fan of lifetime sanctions for much of anything, but I’m kind of “meh” when I hear protestations of “Oh, woe is me! I’m a [usually white] entitled asshole whose only crime is bettering a flight attendant and putting others in fear for their life! What about my civil rights? Why don’t I get to avail myself of legislation passed to help other people who were historically, like I am now, OPRESSED!?!?”
I do not think this was universal but applied to Washington Reagan National Airport (closest airport to D.C., but actually in Virginia). I was on flights to there with that rule and also on flights from Dulles that did not have that rule. However, the seat belt light has always stayed on until the plane reaches cruising altitude which sometimes can take a half-hour anyway.
There is a Federal No fly list, true. And on it, there well may be those suspected of threat of terrorism But we do not know what gets a person on the list or why.
The government still refuses to provide meaningful notice of the reasons our clients are blacklisted, the basis for those reasons, and a hearing before a neutral decision-maker.
You could get on it for no good reason at all or just because your name is very similar. I mean, if someone is a known terrorist why not just arrest them? Nor is it easy to get off it. The ACLU is right, there needs to be due process.
The idea of letting one airline decide, without due process, that you can’t fly anywhere- is totally ridiculous. Maybe the Passenger was a total jerk and even tried to open a door while in flight. Or maybe the passenger lit a cig in the restroom. Or tried for the Mile high club. Or asked a attendant out on a date. Sure, there are lots of covidiots and maskholes, but this is the USA and we have this thing called “due process”.
The Washington Post article said the airlines want the federal no-fly list to include “people who have been convicted of federal charges related to onboard disruption.” So no banning without due process.
Here is one quote from it:
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has challenged the no-fly list in court, would agree. Senior policy analyst Jay Stanley said people who found themselves on the list haven’t been able to determine why they were on it or how they could get off it.
“The government’s record of dealing with people fairly with regards to the existing no-fly list and other watch lists is terrible,” he said. Airlines’ own lists of banned passengers create due process issues as well, he said.
Yep. If a judge decide that person that was just convicted is to dangerous to let fly again , he should add that in, as a court order. It could be part of probation.
WtF? I don’t get it. I mean, have him clean stuff or paint walls or mow the lawn. He doesn’t have to be with the animals. The Judge ordered him to do that, so it is cruel and unusual to prevent him from doing it.
Did the judge order the convicted defendant to not fly for a period of time as part of sentencing? If not, then yes, it is without Due process. The judge sets the sentence, not the airlines. The Judge is free to make such an order. The defense can object or appeal.
How many of these cases actually go to court?
I see nothing wrong with a court-ordered no fly registry, similar to the sex offender registry.
But in actual practice , I doubt if a no-fly list would be very useful, because I assume that the vast majority of these cases never reach a judge.
But – but – but the Supreme Court has ruled that money is speech, so that means monetary fines are unconstitutional!
(NB: The above is clearly absurd, and is intended to be interpreted as a joke.)
How could one be convicted without one’s case reaching a judge?
my point in using the phrase “reach a judge” was to say that these cases rarely go to court. The unruly passenger may get sent off the plane, but the only discipline he receives is from the one specific airline. So creating a national no-fly list after due process in the courts would not have much practical effect–it would be a very,very short list.
But this is a non sequitur to the discussion above. There is broad consensus that plane ragers are not currently facing adequate consequences. What’s at issue is whether these people should go before a court and face harsher sanctions imposed by a judge, or whether the airlines should be empowered to take unilateral action to punish offenders more severely without due process.
Googling, apparently many of these people receive fines from the FAA, which is a civil penalty, not criminal.
I’ll preface this by once more stating that I am reluctant to endorse things like this (things that lead to long-term exclusion from important aspects of modern society), but…
DrDeth, the way you describe that, it makes me wonder if you think that former criminals aren’t already excluded from key aspects of modern life, irrespective of their probationary status (or the lack of it).
ETA: Also, it’s worth flagging (metaphorically) that “due process” does not always mean a trial before a judge and jury with lawyers. Indeed, “due process” might entail none of those.
True. But that is known before sentencing. The Defense knows that the felon might not be able to vote, own a gun etc. Which is why they fight hard for first offenders to get the charges reduced to a misdemeanor.
Yes, Due Process could mean a hearing before a Judge. Which can be appealed.
What do you envision? At least some degree of judicial oversight is “due” if people are to be prohibited from flying on any airline.
Due Process could mean a hearing before a Judge. Which can be appealed.
Keeping in mind I’m not advocating for this, I don’t exactly envision anything. Except of course the very present reality that former criminals are often, as it stands, denied employment and housing opportunities merely because they have a criminal history. Those things are also not a part of a judge’s sentence, and yet it would seem this idea of airlines preventing [probably mostly white] entitled jerks from availing themselves of their services is some new outrage.
If the airlines do it themselves, whether through background checks, through collusion, or even just choose as individual entities to publish a list of expelled passengers (which the others may then happen to read without colluding per se) then I don’t even see how due process comes into it. If the federal government produces the list, ok… due process it is. But then I would expect “due process” would be handled the same way any other purely “administrative” matter gets handled. Why wouldn’t it? So, probably something like several layers of bureaucracy consisting of various internal reviews and appeals processes within the FAA and the DoT (perhaps with DoJ and DHS getting their hands in as well) and then maybe—maybe—at the end of it, after several years of being unable to fly, you get to appeal to a district court. If you’ve got the money for that sort of thing.
The same lived reality everyone else who runs afoul of the bureaucracy must endure.
But, again, if the airlines do something independent of the government… shrug I guess then people can experience the joys of trying to prove the existence of a conspiracy in court. The conservatives on the Supreme Court have, over the last 20 years, done a damn fine job to ensure that unless the airlines are stupid, a lawsuit alleging collusion will be unlikely to make it past the pleadings stage.
Again, that’s the lived reality of everyone else in America who finds themselves under heel (be it a corporate heel or a government heel), whether y’all realize it or not.