Reply #60: For the supremacy clause to apply, there first must be a federal law

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

There is no enabling legislation to much of what the TSA does on an operational basis. The supremacy clause can apply to federal body executing their own internally created policies - but it first must be empowered by congress to perform the conduct being disputed by the state and no modern ruling on administrative searches even remotely touched on anything of the invasive or sexually charged nature of the TSA patdowns.

When the 9th ruled on this in 1973 they could not have conceived of a rouge agency like the TSA ever existing or such an offensive practice even being proposed.