TSA Required Strip-Search of Transgender Teen in NC, Violating Rights, Lawsuit Says

RALEIGH, N.C. — A Raleigh mother has filed a federal lawsuit against the TSA, arguing that the airport security agency violated her transgender teenager’s rights by requiring a strip-search at the airport.

Jamii Erway, 15 at the time, had a valid boarding pass when she passed through security in 2019. When she triggered a “false positive,” the lawsuit said, a TSA screener told her she would have to have her genitals inspected in a private room.

The TSA “advised Jamii that she was not free to leave until she submitted to such a search, in violation of TSA policy, the Fourth Amendment, and state law rights of Jamii, and the boundaries of civil and decent society,” according to the suit.

This requirement and the police presence that followed triggered Erway’s “panic, anxiety, fear, racing heart, shortness of breath,” the suit says. Rather than submit to the search, she and her mother, Kimberly Erway, rented a car and drove 600 miles.

The Erways seek unspecified damages and an injunction preventing such a scenario from happening again.

“Jamii would like to be able to fly again,” her attorneys argue, “and an order from the Court that would ensure that Jamii would never encounter the situation described would assist in reducing the recurring emotional distress that currently prevents her from doing so.”

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration, formed after Sept. 11, 2001, is charged with protecting the nation’s air, train, bus and highway travel. TSA officials did not respond to the N&O’s request for comment.

On its website, the TSA advises transgender passengers that a security officer will press a button designating male or female “based on how you present yourself.”

“The machine has software that looks at the anatomy of men and women differently,” the TSA site said. “The equipment conducts a scan and indicates areas on the body warranting further inspection if necessary.”

But transgender passengers frequently face “false positive” results in such screenings because agents set the scanner to detect a woman, but the machine finds genitalia typically associated with men.

Erway explained that she is transgender, but the scanner operator would not repeat the scan.

“Could Jamii avoid these troubles by advising the scanner operator of the correct button to press?” attorneys ask in the suit. “It is, unfortunately, not that simple. For one thing, body scanner operators are often unwilling to take instructions from passengers. But, even if they were, the male/female button causes other problems. For example, if the operator presses “female,” the scanner will ignore a small item located in the center of the traveler’s back, in order to accommodate the fact that women often have clasps for a bra strap there but men do not.”

A 2015 survey conducted by the U.S. Transgender Society showed that among those who had passed through airport security, 43% had at least one problem due to gender identity. Of those problems, 4% involved people being asked to lift or take off their clothing.

A 2019 ProPublica report examined the TSA’s civil rights complaints over a three-year period and found that 5%, or 298 complaints, involved transgender people — far higher than their estimated share of the U.S. popuation.

Erway’s attorney in California, Jonathan Corbett, said the TSA’s actions violated its own policy.

“TSA policy at the time of the incident did not allow the screener to demand a child — or anyone else — to expose their genitals,” he said in an email. “This appears to be a failure of training and supervision, and we have no indication that they have improved since the incident.”

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