In the U.S., a number of legal scholars, including Bradley Moss, a Washington, D.C. lawyer with particular expertise on security issues, said, “It is unclear, absent congressional approval or every state in the union collectively agreeing to it, how any president would have the authority to impose a federal or national quarantine.”
Polly J. Price, Professor of Law and Professor of Global Health at Emory Law School, however, cited a Supreme Court ruling a century ago that gave states the right to limit travel during one of the yellow fever epidemics. In that decision, Professor Price said the court “suggested that states can do so and can impose quarantines on incoming travelers, ‘so long as it’s for a valid public health measure.’”
Courts have intervened when a quarantine was deemed either unfair or based on racial prejudice. In the article, “Covid-19 – The Law and Limits of Quarantine,” published in the New England Journal of Medicine, jurisprudence experts stated that courts ruled against the city of San Francisco in 1900 when they tried to vaccinate and quarantine Chinese residents.
The authors said, “Quarantines and travel bans are often the first response against new infectious diseases. However, these old tools are usually of limited utility for highly transmissible diseases, and if imposed with too heavy a hand, or in too haphazard a manner, they can be counterproductive. With a virus such as SARS-CoV-2, they cannot provide a sufficient response.”
On 14 March, Kentucky police in Nelson County surrounded the home of a man who had tested positive for COVID-19 but refused to self-isolate. Governor Andy Beshear proclaimed at the time, “It’s a step I hoped I would never have to take, but we can’t allow one person who we know has this virus to refuse to protect their neighbors.”
Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University law professor, when asked to comment on the situation, stated, “If you have a lawful quarantine order for somebody who is known to pose a risk to the public, it should be enforceable by law, by the civil penalty, criminal penalty or literally police presence and not allow you to leave your home. What isn’t justified necessarily is to do that en masse, to have a complete lockdown.”
TRENDPOST: According to the National Constitution Center, “But under the Constitution, individuals have rights in quarantine and isolation conditions. Under the 5th and 14th Amendment’s rights of Due Process and Equal Protection, public health regulations used to impose such conditions can’t be ‘arbitrary, oppressive and unreasonable.’”
As evidenced by rules such as being allowed to eat without a mask when sitting down at a table but forced to wear one when standing up, social distancing ranging from one to four meters depending on the country, face mask dictates, etc., these rules are “arbitrary, oppressive and unreasonable.”
Moreover, as we have documented in the Trends Journal since the COVID War began, not only has the efficacy of the rules imposed been challenged by numerous professionals and health organizations, there is factual evidence they are unhealthy and harmful.
