Quarantine Isolation Statutes

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Police Power and Limitations. (Tuberculosis). The department or a local board may apply for an order from the district court if a person is reasonably suspected to have or to have been exposed to tuberculosis. The application must request that the person be ordered to:

  1. submit to an examination for tuberculosis and, if the person is found to have tuberculosis, to complete an approved course of treatment; or
  2. enter or return to a treatment location to complete an approved course of treatment.

Pa. Code Title 28 § 27.65 1-2

Police Power & Limitations. If the disease is one which the Department, or a local health authority which is also an LMRO, determines to require the quarantine of contacts in addition to isolation of the case, the Department or local health officer of the LMRO shall determine which contacts shall be quarantined, specify the place to which they shall be quarantined, and issue appropriate instructions.

Ala. Code § 22.11A.7 (1987)

Police Power & Limitations. An officer or guard carrying out a quarantine may arrest without warrant anyone who attempts to violate quarantine regulations and move them to the designated detention area or in front of an officer with jurisdiction over the offense. Officers can pass through quarantine lines and have free access to all means of public transportation as needed to perform their duties. Freight and mail can be rejected from a quarantined area. Those with notifiable disease must obey the instructions of state or county health officer.

Ohio R.C. § 3707.08

When a person known to have been exposed to a communicable disease declared quarantinable by the board of health of a city or general health district or the department of health is reported within its jurisdiction, the board shall at once restrict such person to his place of residence or other suitable place, prohibit entrance to or exit from such place without the board's written permission in such manner as to prevent effective contact with individuals not so exposed, and enforce such restrictive measures as are prescribed by the department.

Ohio R.C. § 3707.31

When great emergency exists, the board of health of a city or general health district may seize, occupy, and temporarily use for a quarantine hospital a suitable vacant house or building within its jurisdiction. The board of a district within which is located a municipal corporation having a quarantine hospital shall have exclusive control of such hospital.

Cal. Health & Safety Code § 120175-120250 (1995)

Police Power and Limitations. In the event of the outbreak of a communicable disease, a health official may have access to all supplies necessary from health providers that can either assist in responding to the outbreak or are implicated in the outbreak. If disinfection of goods or property would be unsafe, officers may destroy items, with proper compensation to owner.

Cal. Health & Safety Code § 120275-120305

Penalties. Anyone who violates or refuses a regulation or order of quarantine is guilty of a misdemeanor. A first offense is punishable by forced compliance with quarantine up to a year and two years probation with a repeat offense punishable by confinement of not more than a year.

N.J. Stat. § 26:13-16 (2005)

Job Protection. Any person who has been placed in isolation or quarantine pursuant to an order of the commissioner and who at the time of quarantine or isolation was in the employ of any public or private employer, other than a temporary position, shall be reinstated to such employment or to a position of like seniority, status and pay.

N.J. Stat. §§ 26:4-129 (1918)

Penalties. Except as otherwise specifically provided in this chapter, a person who violates any of the provisions of this chapter, or fails to perform any duty imposed by this chapter at the time and in the manner provided, shall be liable to a penalty of not less than ten nor more than one hundred dollars for each offense.

N.J. Stat. § 26:4-2 (2005)

Authority. In order to prevent the spread of disease, the state department of health, and the local boards of health within their respective jurisdictions and subject to the state sanitary code, shall have power to maintain and enforce proper and sufficient quarantine, wherever deemed necessary.