A federal appeals court has decided that when you fly you have no rights to fresh air, water, food and bathrooms. Following several incidents where planes were delayed for many hours, and passengers were stuck on these planes, sitting on the tarmac, without all the amenities listed above, Assembly Member Michael Gianaris sponsored a bill that would require all flights leaving airports in New York to provide these things if the flight is delayed long enough. Governor Spitzer signed the bill into law last August. Now the law has been struck down, based on the airlines' claim that the "interstate commerce clause" of the U.S. Constitution gives the federal government, and only the federal government, the power to regulate the airline industry. They also used a 1978 law, the "Airline Deregulation Act," to bolster their argument. The fight over control of interstate commerce goes back to 1824, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Gibbons v. Ogden, that the state of New York had no power to grant monopoly power over navigation on the Hudson River. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the majority opinion that stated first that navigation was part of "interstate commerce," and then that only the federal government had the power to regulate it. The result of that case, and others that followed in its footsteps, has come down to us today. According to the NY Times, Assembly Member Gianaris is considering several options, including appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, trying to rewrite the law, or pushing for a federal "passengers' bill of rights." As of right now, I believe he has little chance of succeeding in any of these attempts. The Supreme Court is likely to uphold the appeals court decision, any new state law will probably be struck down again, and with a Republican in the White House a federal law won't have enough votes to uphold a certain veto. In order to get this done, we need to get out into the "swing states" and make sure we get a Democratic president. Just don't fly out there.