“Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth,” the US Supreme Court held in a short, unsigned ruling on November 6,  “no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth.”

The case, Trump v. Orr, concerns a Trump administration policy of requiring that “sex at birth,” rather than “gender identity,” be displayed on US passports. The ruling allows that policy to stand — reversing a lower court’s stay on its enforcement — while the matter continues to work its way through the lower courts.

Here’s what the plaintiffs in the case say they’re after: “[T]he same thing millions of Americans take for granted: passports that allow them to travel without fear of misidentification, harassment, or violence.”

While the following should be obvious, it has to be said because most people don’t seem to have noticed:

Passports don’t ALLOW people to travel, they RESTRICT the ability of people to travel. They’re a relatively recent tool of government control. They’re also wholly unconstitutional.

There’s a term for the government holding you in a place you’d rather not be and forbidding you to leave without permission. That word is “imprisonment.”

Under the US Constitution, imprisonment requires due process of law, including but not limited to conviction, by a jury, of a crime.

It wasn’t until 1947 that the US government strayed so far beyond the Constitution’s limits on its powers that it started requiring passports to enter or leave the US — and that requirement didn’t apply at the Canadian and Mexican borders until after 9/11.

The inclusion of “sex markers” on passports at all is silly, and limiting those “sex markers” to comply with Donald Trump’s personal preferences is sillier.

If the purpose of a passport is to establish that the government has issued a particular person a Very Special Important Permission Slip to Travel, matching that person’s fingerprint to a fingerprint on the passport is sufficient. Anything more is about bureaucratic control fetishes, not a desire to identify travelers.

Trump v. Orr just messes around at the edges of the bigger issue. The government shouldn’t be allowed to — and the Constitution forbids it to — require those Very Special Important Permission Slips to Travel in the first place.

If SCOTUS was willing to do its job — voiding unconstitutional laws — it would overturn the entire federal travel control regime instead of creatively interpreting “equal protection.”

The continuing existence of the US passport scheme is just another evidentiary exhibit in the airtight case that Lysander Spooner put forth in 1870:

“[W]hether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Starting on November 7, the New York Times reports, the number of commercial flights to and from 40 of America’s busiest airports will drop by 10%.

Not because fewer people want to travel by air (in fact, we’re about to see the year’s busiest travel season).

Not because a major airline went out of business (smaller airlines come and go, but the last really big one to disappear was TWA in 2001).

Not because there’s some shortage of available aircraft (that’s ongoing, but not part of this particular problem).

Thousands of flights will be canceled because the federal government is in a supposed “shutdown.”

Air traffic controllers are working without pay until that “shutdown” gets resolved.

As you might imagine, employees who aren’t getting paychecks become less reliable about showing up for work. Some of them quit. Others call in sick. Towers are short-staffed.

I hear from a friend that” general aviation” — private planes and so forth, as opposed to commercial airlines — has already been taking a hit on getting air traffic control guidance.

Now we’re reaching the point where there just aren’t enough controllers working to safely handle the 10 million commercial flights that take off and land each year at American airports. US secretary of transportation Sean Duffy characterizes the flight cuts as a way to “alleviate the pressure.”

There’s an easy long-term solution to this problem, and it doesn’t involve screaming at politicians to get their act together, pass a spending bill, and start paying all those air traffic controllers again.

It’s time to take air traffic control away from the government, at least with respect to letting the Federal Aviation Administration serve as the controllers’ employer.

In 2024, US airlines reported revenues of $247.2 billion and net profits of $6.7 billion. Those airlines, and the airports they fly in and out of, are perfectly capable of taking over air traffic control services and facilities as a “private sector” activity. They’ve got a shared interest in passenger safety and efficient operations; they can surely work out the details in an amicable manner.

Wouldn’t such a transition make flying more expensive? Well, sort of, at least temporarily.

Ticket prices might rise at first, but I suspect the airlines/airports are better at making operations efficient and cutting costs than the US government.

And to the extent that prices do rise, that just means air travelers, rather than all taxpayers, will be footing the bill. Which, if you think about it, is exactly the way it should be.

Some things — all things in my opinion, but certainly THIS thing — are too important to trust to the whims of politicians and leave in the unreliable hands of government.

Fire the FAA and pay the air traffic controllers.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On November 3, the Washington Post reports, “fast-fashion” retailer Shein banned sales of sex dolls on its site after a government regulatory agency threatened to bar the company from operating in France and referred it to prosecutors. Some of the dolls sold on Shein’s online platform were, it seems, too “childlike” in appearance.

I consider it lazy to assert, as many opinionators do, that “no one” supports, or “everyone” wants, this or that particular thing, but if there’s a subject that commands anything close to societal unanimity, it’s opposition to the sexual molestation of children.

Pretty much all of us who aren’t sexual abusers of children want sexual abusers of children stopped and punished. Many even advocate capital punishment as a permanent individual solution and future collective deterrent, and while I’m opposed to the death penalty myself, I do find the opinion understandable.

It’s odd, then, that so many opponents of child molestation also advocate for laws which increase, rather than decrease, the likelihood that someone with such tendencies will act, in that way, on those tendencies.

Or is it really that odd? These days, public opinion — followed by legislative and law enforcement attitudes — seems largely driven by moral panic. Many people don’t want to just stop actual harmful Activity X, but also want government to suppress anything which might activate the “ick factor” associated with seeing, hearing, or thinking about topics adjacent to Activity X.

Thus the increasing tendency toward banning “child pornography” in which no actual children are involved, and “childlike” sex dolls that, whatever else they may be, are not actual children.

If we want to see actual reductions in the incidence of child sexual abuse, it’s worth considering what economists call the “substitution effect.” Per the Corporate Finance Institute, that effect is the “change in demand for a good as a result of a change in the relative price of the good compared to that of other substitute goods.”

A vanilla example, literally: Suppose you like vanilla ice cream. A scoop of vanilla ice cream made with real vanilla costs $1. A scoop made with artificial vanilla flavor costs 50 cents. You prefer saving 50 cents and putting up with artificial flavor. But suppose the price of the artificial version goes up? If it’s 75 cents or 80 cents or 90 cents, you’re more likely to pay just a little bit extra for the real thing.

I don’t keep track of sex doll prices, but so long as they’re legal, they’re presumptively “cheaper” than long prison sentences, mandatory sex offender registration and the handicaps that come with it, maybe even “chemical castration. “Some potential child molesters will opt for the lower “price” of the doll.

Making “childlike” sex dolls illegal brings their “price,” in non-monetary terms, closer to the “price” of actually molesting a child. That, to at least some degree, incentivizes potential child molesters to become actual child molesters.

So, do we want fewer or more child molesters? If the former, we’ll stop letting moral panic drive our legal and political demands.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY