Posted on 10/28/2014 4:16:11 PM PDT by right-wing agnostic
While the nurse quarantined in New Jersey has been released, the ACLU continues to push back against such measures by the states, and as the disease spreads, these questions will persist.
Yesterday I discussed potential due process challenges to Ebola quarantines. Another possible constitutional objection to such measures, as Josh Blackman points out, is preemption because of a conflict with federal policy. The issue is not that state quarantine rules are tougher than the CDC suggests – federal law explicitly allows states to be tougher in this regard. Rather, it is that the quarantine of health care workers returning from West Africa conflicts with the Obama Administration’s policy of not discouraging them from going to the hot zone, as evidenced by the decision to not bar air traffic from the area.
As it happens, the Supreme Court’s discussions of the permissibility of quarantines has been mostly in the preemption contexts, going back to the landmark dormant commerce clause case, Gibbons v. Ogden in 1824. (A quarantine is by definition a prophylactic measure that applies to those who are not necessarily sick of infected.) The Court has ruled strongly against any kind of implied preemption for quarantines. Rather, it has said that unless the federal government adopts quarantine laws or regulations inconsistent with those of the states, “the laws of the state on the subject are [presumptively] valid.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I can’t see how the Federal quarantine policies could pre-empt the states inherent “police power” to act in the interest of public safety.
It is a state right. It is court tested and absolute.
In 1917 here the public health officer could fine and or imprison anyone violating quarantine.
Pure politics. The states have the right in this case.
I remember the rule of law too. I would have said the same about the free exercise of religion and about a state's right to set its own marriage laws, among many other recent changes to the standard of freedom we used to have.
This nurse is a typical democratic spoiled brat that in pursuit of his political agenda she puts in grave danger the health of her family and neighbors. If she had arrived in NY, where the governor is Democrat, instead of NJ, she would have not mounted such a disgraceful show.
While Obama disregards the Ebola menace, the Ebola panic spreads at the Defense Department.
Soldiers returning home from Ebola infested African countries are quarantine 21 days in Italy before entering U.S.
430 doctors and nurses died killed by the disease while treating Ebola patients in Africa...
Some African countries put 42 days in quarantine those coming from Ebola countries.
Why are health care workers coming from Ebola countries not forced to be at least 21 days in quarantine when they return to U.S.A. for the protection of their own families and the country?
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