Arrgghh! What happened to the body I put in this article?
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit claiming Maricopa County officials have violated the rights of a quarantined tuberculosis patient for months by treating him like a criminal.
The U.S. District Court complaint filed Wednesday on behalf of Robert Daniels alleges that health officials and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office have violated numerous constitutional rights and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The suit seeks what it calls appropriate accommodations for Daniels, rather than severe and “inhumane” jail conditions.
“It’s good news for me,” Daniels said Wednesday evening. “I finally have a chance to get out of this black hole.”
Robert England, the county’s tuberculosis control officer, declined comment.
Daniels, 27, is under a court order and has been isolated in a jail ward at Maricopa Medical Center for 10 months, although he was not convicted or charged with any crime. Linda Cosme, an attorney for Daniels, said her client has been victimized by constitutional violations.
The ACLU should offer this guy shelter in their headquarters.
When you violate a public health order, you get treated like a criminal because you are a criminal.
Communicable diseases kill people. Spreading them is like arson, it’s not specifically intended to kill anybody, but it’s done with callous and atrocious disregard for human life.
Wasn’t this guy told not to travel (because of his highly contagious disease)on commercial transportation but decided to travel international anyway? From what I understand he knew about his condition and said %U anyway.
Not much different than someone with AIDS knowingly having sex without telling the partner.
A pox on the ACLU!
We need to build a TB colony preferably in American held sections of Antarctica. It's not permanent colonization to puting people dying down there with a good Cesium-131 RTG battery for heat, food, plenty of dope and booze and a one way ticket.
It truly is a sad thing that he has contracted this disease, but it is a real necessity to prevent its spread. If being locked up is the price for that, then so be it. I can probably think of better places than a jail to accomplish that, though, in the long run.
Such quarantine power could be abused, but that would be easily determined through testing.
I would accept this based on the deadliness of the disease rather than the degree of its communicability, excepting, of course, those diseases that are not at all communicable.