It started with Jesse Ventura’s titanium hip and turned into a fight over the Bill of Rights.

In federal court in St. Paul on Friday, a lawyer for the former governor argued that rules implemented by the Transportation Security Administration – which subject Ventura to pat-down body searches when he flies – violate his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable and unwarranted searches.

The TSA’s rules were “issued in secret, (were) never published (and) can be changed at any time, in secret,” attorney David Bradley Olsen told U.S. District Judge Susan Rogers Nelson.

The government, though, contends that the searches are legal and that they can be challenged only in federal appeals court, not in a district court, as Ventura has done.

The Justice Department wants the former governor’s case dismissed, and that motion was the subject of the hearing. After listening to arguments from both sides, Nelson said she would issue a ruling later.

But after the hearing had adjourned and the lawyers had corralled their papers, Ventura was just getting started. Silent throughout the hearing, he went up to Tamara Ulrich, the Justice Department lawyer from Washington who had argued for dismissal, and told her TSA’s airport screenings were un-American.

“In a free country, you should never feel comfortable being searched,” he told her. “This is not the country I was born in. We’re a fascist nation now.”

Ventura’s life is legend. He grew up in Minneapolis, served in the predecessor of the Navy’s SEALs and later became a professional wrestler under the name Jesse “The Body” Ventura.

He also took a turn at acting, but in 1990, he ran for mayor of Brooklyn Park and won. Eight years later, he ran as the Reform Party candidate for governor and won.

He served a single term and did not seek re-election.

He turned 60 this month and now hosts “Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura” on cable’s truTV. His lawsuit, filed in January, stems from the fact the show requires him to fly two or three times a week.

The suit says Ventura had a titanium hip implanted in 2008. He discovered that every time he showed up at an airport security line, his hip set off the walk-through metal detector. Security screeners would check him with a hand-held metal-detector and then send him on his way.

But the former governor says that changed in the fall of 2010. Since then, whenever his hip sets off the walk-through detector, TSA screeners pull him aside for a more detailed check, and he contends it is unconstitutional.

The check includes either the use “whole-body imaging” or a pat-down body search. The suit said the latter requires “the security officer to run his hands and fingers over and to feel the subject’s entire body, including private and sensitive areas of the body.”

“Despite Governor Ventura’s status as a frequent flyer, a veteran of the United States military and having been the state of Minnesota’s highest elected official, and despite his easily verifiable medication condition, TSA did not give him the option of submitting to less intrusive security measures such as use of a magnetic hand wand, nor was he given the option of a ‘trusted traveler’ medical or other exemption from the (whole-body imaging) or pat-down body search procedures,” the suit contended.

Without reasonable grounds for suspicion, those additional scans “are unwarranted and unreasonable intrusions on Governor Ventura’s personal privacy and dignity and his right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures,” his suit argued.

But the government contends that the “Standard Operating Procedures,” or SOPs, the TSA developed to govern security screenings is a “final order” issued by a government official. As such, the action can be challenged only in a federal court of appeals, not a district court.

What’s more, it can be challenged only within 60 days of being issued.

Ventura and Olsen maintain that challenging the TSA’s actual procedures is difficult because they are considered “Sensitive Security Information” and aren’t made public.

It prompted Olsen to open his oral argument with a quote from “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll: “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrariwise; what it is, wouldn’t be, and what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”

“The public doesn’t know what the SOP says,” Olsen told the judge. “If the public has never seen it, they can’t be charged with violating it.”

There is no indication when Nelson will rule. After the hearing, Ventura said he questioned why the government was providing security for private industry and said that TSA’s actions were part of “the locking down of the American citizen.”

“I would rather face the terrorist on a daily basis than give up one of my rights,” he said.

David Hanners can be reached at 612-338-6516.