Latest TSA Flub: Uh, Is DC License Valid?

A ridiculous TSA story has once again gone viral: Ashley Brandt was baffled last week when a TSA agent in Phoenix was initially unsure whether she could let Brandt through airport security with just a District of Columbia license. "I don’t know if we can accept these. Do you have a US passport?" the agent said, according to Brandt. A manager who was called over quickly set the record straight—DC licenses are perfectly acceptable forms of identification, and in fact Brandt had no trouble when she flew to Phoenix—but a tweet from Brandt's boyfriend quickly went viral, the Washington Post reports.

"Holy. [Expletive]. TSA @ PHX asked for gf’s passport because her valid DC license deemed invalid b/c 'DC not a state,'" he posted. Some who noticed the tweet had their own stories of having trouble using licenses from Guam or Puerto Rico. DCist notes that commenters on the Post article also offered up similar stories ("The young TSA officer wanted to see my passport because she thought my District of Columbia driver's license somehow was from the nation of Colombia"), but Mother Jones is rather unimpressed with the "controversy": "I get it: We all hate TSA, and TSA agents sometimes do dumb things," writes Kevin Drum. "But honestly, folks. Chill. Not every minor inconvenience in the world deserves to go viral." (More Transportation Security Administration stories.)