Temporary work around - get a TSA compliant laptop bag. Yes, it means doing something different to accommodate them, but in the longer term it saves you this pain.
And convince the TSA to do what we do at Indian airports:
plinkplonk 9 minutes ago
How this works in India.
When you put your laptop in a bin, the security person puts one of two identical tags (pieces of plastic with identical numbers on them) into the bin, on top of your computer and gives you the other one.
When you finish your patdown/metal detector etc screening and want to take your computer back, you give the security person at the other end of the line your tag, she looks around for the bin with the identical tag, and hands you the contents of the bin and takes your tag back.
Not foolproof/fraudproof, but it seems to work in practice.
reply
No good. TSOs essentially reserve the right to void or override any policy, at any time, for any reason, with no warning in advance. Many will simply tell you that no such policy exists or ever has existed. And there is no appeal of the decisions made by the people at the checkpoint: either you do what they tell you right there, even if it contradicts policy (even if it contradicts federal law -- the TSA is being sued over that very point by a guy who claims they routinely violate disability-accommodation laws), or you don't fly.
Which means there is no such thing as "a TSA compliant laptop bag", only "a laptop bag that a TSO might, a majority of the time, if you're lucky and they're in a good mood, let you send through the x-ray without removing your laptop".
And convince the TSA to do what we do at Indian airports:
plinkplonk 9 minutes ago
How this works in India. When you put your laptop in a bin, the security person puts one of two identical tags (pieces of plastic with identical numbers on them) into the bin, on top of your computer and gives you the other one. When you finish your patdown/metal detector etc screening and want to take your computer back, you give the security person at the other end of the line your tag, she looks around for the bin with the identical tag, and hands you the contents of the bin and takes your tag back. Not foolproof/fraudproof, but it seems to work in practice. reply