Breast Feeding Mom Hassled By TSA Wins $75,000 Suit Against U.S. Government


A breast feeding mom who only wanted to bring several bottles of breast milk, which she had pumped earlier, on a flight from Phoenix to Los Angeles without the milk being zapped by radiation from the Transportation Safety Administration’s X-ray machine, sued the TSA — and this week, she won.

Traveling in January 2010 with her then-seven-month-old son, Stacey Armato had already studied up on the TSA regulations regarding breast feeding mothers who bring bottled milk through security checkpoints.

Apparently, the TSA agents on duty that day in Phoenix had not read the handbook. They put Stacey through such an ordeal that she sued. Now, four years later, the breast feeding mom has finally won. Though details have not been finalized, the TSA has reportedly agreed to pay Stacey Armato $75,000 — money that she says, after covering her legal fees, she will donate to a nonprofit group that supports breast feeding moms.

She won the settlement, she believes, because she finally got the government to hand over a security video that shows the ordeal she was subjected to by the TSA. In addition to refusing to inspect the breast milk bottles separately and not run them through a potentially harmful X-ray machine, they forced Armato to wait in a glass holding booth — even after she showed them a printout of their own regulations.

Stacey Armato being held in a glass booth for asking that her bottled breast milk not go through an X-ray machine.

The hassle took 40 minutes and made her miss her flight.

“I was there for quite some time, built up a lot of anxiety,” she said. “I could see the manager and supervisor standing just feet away and I broke down in tears after probably 30 minutes of waiting.”

And the whole thing happened because the TSA agents refused to follow their own rule book.

“I ask him to read the rules. He does,” Stacey said, recounting her experience for a local TV station. “It says, ‘Breast milk is to be alternately screened.’ He just looked at me and said, ‘Well, not today.'”

She said that the TSA agents told her that if she didn’t want her bottled breast milk put through the X-ray machine, she would be required to pour it out before passing through security.

Eventually, the TSA agents relented and let Stacey and her bottles of breast milk through.

The settlement also requires the TSA to retrain agents in how to handle breast feeding moms carrying bottled breast milk, and to update its online handbook to provide more information for mothers traveling with breast milk.

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