D.C. Circuit Bars Watchlist Suit in District Court While TSA No Fly Order Stands

Khalid, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, was denied boarding an Emirates Airline flight from Pakistan to the United States in 2019 and learned through the Department of Homeland Security's Traveler Redress Inquiry Program that he is on the No Fly List. He sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to challenge both his No Fly List status and his placement on the broader Terrorist Watchlist.

Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson said the district court could not redress Khalid's injuries without effectively voiding the TSA Administrator's final order sustaining his No Fly List designation — something only the circuit court may do under Section 46110, which grants the courts of appeals "exclusive jurisdiction to affirm, amend, modify, or set aside any part of" a TSA order.

"Any remedy that removes Khalid from the Terrorist Watchlist would violate the TSA Final Order affirming Khalid's No Fly List designation and thereby set it aside, something only the circuit court may do under Section 46110," Henderson wrote, joined by Circuit Judge Childs.

The panel rejected the government's fallback argument that the circuit court itself could hear the Terrorist Watchlist claims under Telecommunications Research and Action Center v. FCC. "TRAC does not suggest our exclusive jurisdiction extends to an agency or to an action other than those set forth in the applicable statutory provision," Henderson wrote. "Challenges to TSC action fall outside the class of claims that Section 46110 covers."

Henderson said Khalid faces "an ordering problem" and must first obtain removal from the No Fly List in the circuit court before pursuing a Terrorist Watchlist challenge in district court. "Khalid holds the key to free himself from his ostensible legal limbo," the majority wrote, noting that he may trigger a new DHS TRIP review after any future travel delay or border incident. Review of his watchlist claims, the opinion said, is "only temporarily unavailable rather than completely precluded."

In a separate ruling issued the same day, the panel dismissed in part and denied in part Khalid's petition for review of the TSA final order. See Khalid v. Transportation Security Administration, No. 23-1150 (D.C. Cir. April 14, 2026).

Circuit Judge Pillard dissented, arguing that the Threat Screening Center — not TSA — is the primary keeper of both lists and that a district court order directing the TSC to remove Khalid from the Terrorist Watchlist would not set aside the TSA order but at most moot it. "Section 46110 is a grant of judicial review power; it is not a shield that prevents review of any action that might upset the continued operation of the TSA Final Order," she wrote.

Pillard said the majority's approach "places our circuit in tension with other courts interpreting section 46110," citing the Sixth Circuit's decision in Mokdad v. Lynch and the Ninth Circuit's decision in Fikre v. FBI. She added that "[r]endering the Center's watchlist decision judicially unreviewable to shield a decision of this court sustaining a TSA Final Order is especially perverse because the Center, not TSA, is the nerve center of the watchlisting operation."

The dissent also argued that the ruling's practical reach is narrower than the majority's language suggests, because the TSC conducts biannual reviews of U.S. citizens' placements and each new TSC decision supersedes prior TSA orders. "That window of circuit-court exclusivity is inevitably brief," Pillard wrote.

Khalid was represented by Gadeir I. Abbas, Lena F. Masri and Justin Sadowsky. Joshua P. Waldman argued for the government, with Brian M. Boynton, Sharon Swingle and Catherine Padhi on the brief.