The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents 47,000 Transportation Security Officers across 400 U.S. airports, filed a lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on Wednesday. The lawsuit demands the release of government records about the TSA’s GoldPlus program, which aims to replace public officers with private security contractors.
Program Details
According to court documents, the GoldPlus program would hand passenger screening and security technology operations over to private companies. The union stated that the public first learned about the initiative when a TSA briefing flier was found at Orlando International Airport and leaked to news outlets earlier this year.
Records cited in the lawsuit show that the TSA began soliciting vendor information for the program in August 2025 and presented details at an industry conference in March 2026. The agency did not formally notify AFGE about GoldPlus until late July, when it disclosed plans to launch the program next year at airports in Tampa, Florida; Charleston, South Carolina; and Des Moines, Iowa.
A fiscal 2027 budget justification document for the agency outlines a 14% reduction in the TSA workforce—cutting roughly 8,400 positions out of 61,000—and redirects $477 million toward screener privatization.
AFGE National President Everett Kelley said, “TSA has been keeping everyone in the dark about its privatization plans – TSA employees, members of Congress, airport authorities, and the flying public. And it’s little wonder why – this privatization expansion is a major departure from the aviation security system established by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Changes of this magnitude must not be made in the dark.”
The lawsuit follows a separate lawsuit AFGE filed against the Department of Homeland Security over a March 2025 move to eliminate collective bargaining rights for federal transportation security officers, an issue currently pending in federal court.
Original reporting: Tampa Free Press — read the source article.
