Another Federal appeals court has overruled arguments by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that its checkpoint staff are immune from any liability for sexual assaults or other offenses committed in the course of their official duties.

In its decision last week in Elisabeth Koletas v. USA, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t reach the question of whether sexual or other assaults on airline passengers are within the scope of TSA officers’ duties. But a panel of the 11th Circuit held that . The panel was unpersuaded by a decade-old, unpublished, nonprecedential decision by an earlier panel of the 11th Circuit that failed to address the text of the law that makes the US government liable for the wrongful acts of “any officer of the United States who is empowered by law to execute searches.”

It would seem beyond argument that “Transportation Security Officers” (TSOs), as they are identified by the TSA and on their uniforms and badges, are “officers  of the United States”. And the entire reason for their job is to “execute searches” of travelers.

But in Circuit after Circuit, the TSA has put forth the absurd (and, we are pleased to report, unsucessful) argument that TSOs aren’t the sort of officers Congress meant when it enacted this law. That argument has now been rejected, in published precedential opinions, by all six Circuit Courts of Appeal that have considered it.

More information about the case of Koletas v. USA:

• District Court docket and links to pleadings
• Circuit Court docket and links to pleadings
• Oral argument (March 4, 2025)
• Circuit Court slip opinion (November 12, 2025)
• Blog post from plaintiff’s law firm

Despite the rulings in victimized travelers’ favor in each of these courts, we are disturbed that the TSA is so fixated on its quest for absolute impunity that it continues to make this discredited argument. The TSA’s hope, apparently, is to find one sympathetic Court of Appeals that will buy its argument, creating a circuit split that can provide a basis for getting the Supreme Court to weigh in on the question.

Let’s not get bogged down in the details of statutory construction, though. Checkpoint staff — whether they are TSOs or TSA contractors — should be liable to criminal sanctions if they rape or assault travelers. And the Federal government in whose name they act and whose power they wield should face criminal liability in these cases.