TRENTON, N.J. — Lawyers for Gov. Chris Christie and New Jersey health officials asked a judge Friday to throw out a lawsuit from a nurse who lived in Maine and was quarantined because she had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa in 2014.
State lawyers said in response to Kaci Hickox’s federal civil rights lawsuit that health workers acted with the public’s safety in mind when they had her quarantined, and that Christie and the other officials are immune from lawsuits over public health quarantines.
“As a nurse, Ms. Hickox acted in the best traditions of her profession by volunteering to treat Ebola-infected patients in Sierra Leone,” the state wrote. “But on her return to the U.S., four separate readings revealed that she had an elevated temperature. Public health officials, acting in the same best traditions of their profession, properly had her quarantined.”
The disease is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person who’s showing symptoms.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and a New York firm sued on behalf of Hickox, who lived in Fort Kent and was working with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak, which killed thousands of people. When she returned via Newark Liberty International Airport, she was stopped, questioned and sent to stay in a tent outside a Newark hospital.
She said Christie’s decision to quarantine her was made out of fear and was politically motivated. Christie, a Republican, was considering a run for president and has since entered the race.
Besides Christie, the lawsuit names as defendants former state health commissioner Mary O’Dowd and other health department employees. The lawsuit seeks at least $250,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, and Hickox’s lawyers say they hope the case will change a quarantine policy driven by politics instead of public health concerns.
The state says the primary objective of Christie, O’Dowd and other officials was the “safety and general welfare” of the public during the Ebola virus outbreak.
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