“Your office received a letter from Delta Airlines on February 3, 2022. In that letter, Delta indicated their desire for the Department of Justice to create a comprehensive ‘no fly’ list. This list would presumably include any airline passenger who has been convicted of any on-board disruption. As a result, those passengers would subsequently be banned from using any commercial air service provider moving forward. We write today to express our strong opposition to the creation of such a list. While airlines are currently free to deny service to any individual over past transgressions on their flights, the federal government’s role in denying access to the commercial aviation network has been limited to ensuring that suspected terrorists remain off of domestic flights.”

“According to data from the FAA, the majority of recent infractions on airplanes has been in relation to the mask mandate from the TSA. While we strongly condemn any violence towards airline workers, there is significant uncertainty around the efficacy of this mandate, as highlighted by the CEO of Southwest Airlines during a recent Senate Committee hearing. Creating a federal ‘no-fly’ list for unruly passengers who are skeptical of this mandate would seemingly equate them to terrorists who seek to actively take the lives of Americans and perpetrate attacks on the homeland. The TSA was created in the wake of 9/11 to protect Americans from future horrific attacks, not to regulate human behavior onboard flights,” writes Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis in a letter to AG Merrick Garland, signed by seven other GOP Senators.