According to the Los Angeles Times, a South Bay woman has won $75,000 from the TSA because the agency would not let her containers of breast milk through its screening without incident.
Stacey Armato, who is an attorney, said that the TSA will now retrain its screeners so they accommodate women with bottles of breast milk more gently. Armato said, “That’s a big deal. I expect a lot of changes.”
The TSA officials would only state that the settlement is not finished and that the agency has another month to ask that the case be dismissed.
Armato had to undergo two separate incidents in 2010 in which she was bothered by TSA screeners; both occurred before flights from Phoenix to Los Angeles. The first time, she requested that the screeners avoid X-raying the bottle; in the second case, she even went so far as to hand the screeners a copy of TSA regulations to prove her point that the milk should not be X-rayed. She suggested that the bottle be swabbed around the exterior to check for explosive residue.
The screeners ignored her, forcing her to stay in a containment booth for half an hour while they debated what to do. Armato said, “I broke down crying in the middle of it.”
The TSA has apologized, and there has been a change in TSA policy as a result: every major airport now features bottled liquid scanners which can examine liquids from breast milk to insulin.
The TSA stated: “When carrying breast milk through security checkpoints it is treated in the same manner as liquid medication. Parents flying with, and without, their child(ren) are permitted to bring breast milk in quantities greater than three ounces as long as it is presented for inspection at the security checkpoint.”
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