MIAMI – Calling his powers authority “overbroad” and indicating it's uncharted waters, a Florida law expert said Gov. Ron DeSantis’ move to quarantine visitors from other states to halt the spread of the COVID-19 virus could spell legal trouble.
“What the Governor has done raises questions,” Meryl Chertoff, executive director for the Georgetown Project on State and Local Government Policy and Law, told the Florida Record.
On Mar. 24 DeSantis, a Republican, sent National Guard troops to greet out-of-state passengers arriving at Florida’s biggest airports. Passengers arriving on direct flights from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, where the number of COVID-19 infection rate are high, and those arriving in Florida by car, are required to quarantine for 14 days.
Law enforcement has been assigned to keep track of their whereabouts.
“As soon as this happened in Wuhan, the flights from China were turned off," DeSantis was quoted in a POLITICO report. "As soon as Italy began having the outbreak, they shut off the flights from Italy. We have an even bigger outbreak within our own country, within the New York City area, and yet the flights had accelerated.”
The Trump Administration praised the Governor’s ban on allowing visitation to the states from countries heavily impacted by the pandemic such as China and Italy. However, banning New Yorkers from entering the state raises legal questions.
“Under the Constitution there is a right to travel,” Chertoff said. “The Governor has broad authority, however under the Constitution and its privileges and immunities clauses, you need to treat in-state and out-of-state residents the same.”
Chertoff was asked if a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union was likely.
“I can’t speak for the ACLU,” she said. “But individuals who have been adversely impacted might compare what options there are.”
Chertoff said officials have been asking for national coordination to clarify the issue as a policy.
“As long as the virus is difficult to detect, there will be problems with large numbers of people having their rights affected,” she said. “Most of these people pose no public threat to anyone. Until you can specify who has it (virus) it will be difficult to sort out.”
Chertoff said the Fourth Amendment prohibiting unlawful searches and seizures will be challenged by the pandemic situation.
“Is there a probable cause to stop cars at roadblocks?” she asked. “It’s being done on an ad hoc basis.”
Chertoff added there is very little past precedence on the law books for a case like this.
“Few cases have been tested in court,” she said.
According to POLITICO, one possible precedent to DeSantis’ coronavirus quarantine is the Ebola crisis of 2014. Ebola is a bleeding virus that can cause organ failure and death and for a time was endemic to the Sub-Saharan region of Africa.
In that outbreak some state governors required American relief workers returning from Africa into a quarantine.
In the present crisis some lawmakers believe the power to quarantine should be paramount.
“We don’t want them to come here,” Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber told POLITICO about out-of-state visitors. “I don’t know any other way to say it. We just don’t want them to come here.”