Ebola’s been in the news lately, with several infected individuals on American soil. New York and New Jersey have begun to quarantine individuals arriving from West Africa who have had contact with infected people, and a nurse subjected to quarantine threatened a legal challenge. So, what’s the law? And what are the potential criminal law implications? Control measures generally. My colleague Jill Moore recently wrote this summary of North Carolina’s overall approach to addressing communicable diseases. Generally, G.S. 130A-144 grants authority to the Commission for Public Health, working with with implementation assistance from local health directors, to prescribe control measures designed to limit the spread of infectious diseases. Misdemeanor to fail to comply with control measures. As I discussed in this prior post about knowingly exposing others to communicable diseases, it is a misdemeanor to fail to comply with control measures. More serious charges may be appropriate when a person purposefully attempts to infect another with a deadly disease. The law of quarantines. The CDC explains here that isolation orders separate infected persons from those who are not infected, while quarantine orders limit the movement of those who have been exposed to a disease to see whether they become ill. Either type of order is a potential control measure, and both are referenced specifically in the portion of the North Carolina Administrative Code that addresses control measures. 10A NCAC 41A.0201(d). A quarantine order appears to have been imposed in Texas on members of Eric Duncan’s family. (Duncan died of Ebola earlier this [...]
Faculty Coordinators
