Indecision and Delay in Quarantines

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts about judicial systems’ response to the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2 is its technical name; Covid-19 is the disease it causes) outbreak and the justice systems’ active participation in a whole-of-society-approach (WOSA) to national security and safety threats such as Covid-19.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times’ Rob Vardon, on March 1 U.S. Federal Judge Josephine Staton cancelled a hearing scheduled early last week on the hotly debated federal proposal to  use a Costa Mesa, California, facility, the Fairview Developmental Center, to house 30 to 50 infected patients. Three days earlier, the federal government had withdrawn its request to use the facility as a quarantine site after objections from local officials and residents.

The transfer was expected to start as early as February 23. But just two days before that, the city was able to obtain a temporary restraining order (TRO), halting the transfer to the state-owned facility that is no longer operational.

As I wrote in the previous post, Staton had granted Costa Mesa’s request for a TRO on February 21,  that prevented federal and state agencies from placing people with the virus at the Fairview Center for isolation, monitoring and care, a move that was planned just two days after the TRO request was granted.  The facility, which opened in 1959, once housed about 2,700 adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities but today stands nearly empty and is slated for closure. The patients, as many as 30 to 50, have been quarantined at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California.

Local city and Orange County officials and residents opposing the transfer argued that they were blindsided by the federal government and that there were too many unknown factors, such as the exact number of patients and the level of care they needed. "Getting more information as to the nature of the people and the plans around managing these individuals in the county is what we are currently waiting for," said Nichole Quick, Orange County Health Care Agency assistant director.
In a court document on February 28, Judge Staton acknowledged Costa Mesa’s objection to what it considers a “flawed, unreasonable decision-making process that wrongly excluded county and local professionals and government leaders.” The city had  filed the TRO  against federal defendants including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense, the Air Force and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state defendants including  the  state of California and its Office of Emergency Services and Department of General Services, and the Fairview Developmental Center.  

Local officials had met with representatives of state and federal agencies to try to get answers to the city’s questions about the proposed use of the Fairview Center. “After the three-hour meeting, we didn’t feel any closer to understanding the safety, security or patient plans for [the Fairview Developmental Center] and local hospitals in Orange County,” Mayor Katrina Foley said in a statement. In a contrast highlighting a lack of coordination between local and federal representatives, the federal defendants said in the report that they found the meeting “informative and productive” and that federal officials answered, “the vast majority of the questions.” Yet, in a report that Judge Staton ordered the sides to file after their meeting to discuss the issue, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Beck wrote that “the federal defendants have decided not to move forward with the challenged proposal.”
Andrew Do, the vice chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, said that even Judge Staton acknowledged that “it wasn't clear what was it that the state was trying to do.”

Costa Mesa Mayor Katrina Foley said that though she considered the government’s decision to hold off its plan “at least a temporary victory for the citizens of Costa Mesa and Orange County ... the government has not promised not to place future infected persons there, so the battle is not over. We will continue to ask the court to prohibit the government from using this completely inappropriate facility for housing people infected with a highly communicable and potentially fatal disease.”

Debate Continues Among Uncertainty and Anxiety for People at Sea

According to news reports today  by the Associated Press and other outlets, the Covid-19-stricken Grand Princess cruise ship, idling for days off the coast of San Francisco while officials debated where to send the roughly 3,500 people aboard, is scheduled to dock in Oakland, California, sometime tomorrow, Monday, March 8,  only after its captain initially announced to passengers that they would dock today. “I’m an American. I should be able to come home,” said one passenger who had not yet been tested for the virus.

As the coronavirus (Covid-19) spreads, necessitating more and more isolation and quarantines of people infected by or exposed to the disease, urgent civil liberty issues like those suggested by the Grand Cruise passenger quoted above, and safety issues like those in the Costa Mesa lawsuit are likely to lead to many more legal disputes. Courts need to anticipate these issues today in close cooperation and coordination with all segments of the governments and private entities in an all-of-society approach.  

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