Judge Debra Livingston, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. (Photo: Rick Kopstein/ALM) Judge Debra Livingston, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. (Photo: Rick Kopstein/ALM)

A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Friday upheld the dismissal of a constitutional challenge to Connecticut's use of strict quarantine measures for residents who returned from West Africa during the Ebola virus outbreak in 2014.

The majority opinion found that the plaintiffs' alleged fears about being subjected to quarantine based on travel to Ebola-affected regions were too speculative to support standing in the suit and held that the state's top doctor was protected by qualified immunity from civil liability in spearheading the state's response.

The case, captioned Liberian Community Association v. Lamont, had been watched for its possible implications with regard to measures that states have taken during the current COVID-19 crisis, though the court's opinion did not address the pandemic directly.

In 2014, Connecticut forced eight people into mandatory quarantine for weeks during the Ebola scare, including an immigrant family and two doctoral candidates at Yale School of Public Health. The plaintiffs, who claimed due process and Fourth Amendment violations, argued that Connecticut had failed to assess their individual risk to public health and did not provide them the ability to appeal their mandatory detention.

U.S. Circuit Judges Debra Ann Livingston and Ralph Winter, however, agreed that state officials were authorized under Connecticut law to impose a quarantine if they determine the measure to be "necessary and the least restrictive alternative to protect or preserve the public health."

The plaintiffs, the judges said, were not able to point to any "clearly established law" requiring individualized assessment or judicial review or to any cases laying out federal procedural due process protections for quarantines.

The ruling came over the objection of U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin, who agreed with the majority's analysis that the plaintiffs lacked standing to petition for injunctive relief but objected to the dismissal of the damages claim against Dr. Jewel Mullen, then the Connecticut commissioner of public heath.

Chin also said that the complaint had plausibly alleged that the officials knew that a quarantine was not necessary to protect the public health and had acted out of political, and not scientific, motivation.

According to Chin, "analogous" cases involving civil commitments had already clearly established substantive and due process rights that could apply to quarantines.

"Hence, the complaint plausibly alleges that it was not objectively reasonable for Dr. Mullen and the other state officials to order plaintiffs into quarantine, and to have done so without proper notice or individualized assessment or other procedural safeguard," Chin wrote in a 16-page dissent.

Livingston, who authored the majority opinion, said those rulings referred only to the civil detention of people who are mentally ill and warned against extending them to quarantines.

"Quarantines against infectious disease, involving different public safety concerns and implicating different liberty interests, are simply not sufficiently analogous to civil commitment of the mentally ill to clearly establish applicable due process constraints," Livingston wrote in the 44-page opinion.

Michael Wishnie, a Yale Law School professor and lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said he was "disappointed" with the panel's decision not to use its ruling to clarify the law surrounding due process in quarantines.

However, he said, Chin's dissent would put public officials "on notice, at a high level of generality, what is important and useful" in responding to future health crises.

"Going forward, government officials, public officials, are on notice that the focus is to accommodate both the civil rights and public health concerns," Wishnie said.

The Connecticut attorney general's office, which represented the state defendants, said in a statement that "we are pleased that the court accepted our arguments in this unique case."

The plaintiffs were represented by attorneys from Yale Law School's Legal Services Organization and Jenner & Block.

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