Goldtent TA Paradise

FLORIDA’S FORCED QUARANTINE LAW IS STILL ON THE BOOKS

1. Fullgoldcrown says:

   December 17, 2022 - 11:29 am at 11:29 am

   I was asked by several C&C’ers in the comments yesterday about SB 2006. Those questions joined another half dozen similar ones from over the last two weeks. It appears the psyops machine is cranking against Governor DeSantis again.

   Here’s the lie: When Governor DeSantis signed SB2006, containing the vaccine passport ban, he secretly snuck in a devious involuntary quarantine provision, allowing the state to lock up and force-vaccinate anybody deemed a “danger to the public.”

   It’s amazing how persistent this lie has been. It must be working, because they’ve been peddling it for over a year.

   Every good lie has an element of truth. In this case, the truth is the 42-page blockbuster SB2006 did contain the involuntary quarantine language. Here it is:

   Okay, that’s outrageously super gross. You cannot imagine how many questions I got about that language back at the time the bill was being voted on. But just hang on for a second. Let’s look at the next part of the bill, just below the quarantine law, the part adding the ban on vaccine passports:

   There’s a critical difference between the two parts. Do you see it? The section on quarantines isn’t underlined. The section on passports IS underlined.

   Underlined text is what the bill added to the statute. Regular, non-underlined text is pre-existing statute. The quarantine provision was already a law in Florida when DeSantis became governor. You with me so far? DESANTIS DIDN’T SIGN THE QUARANTINE PROVISION INTO LAW. It was ALREADY law in Florida. It just happened to be included the bill because of how bills are drafted.

   Some conservatives understand this, but still argue that DeSantis should have removed the quarantine law when he had the chance, in the same bill, SB2006. After all, they can just as easily remove stuff as add it. Removals in bills are shown using strikethrough, like this:

   All they would have had to do was strike through the quarantine paragraph. But here’s the thing: Governor DeSantis doesn’t draft bills. He’s the governor. He only gets to sign or veto bills. The LEGISLATURE drafts the bills. And even that is not a straight line; they have to negotiate with each other to agree on bill language, to get the votes needed to pass the bill.

   SB2006 was a blockbuster 42-page monster with TONS of good stuff in it including government mask mandate bans, requirements to re-open schools, limitations on local emergency orders (which ended local mask mandates and lockdowns), and, as mentioned, vaccine passport bans.

   It was a good bill, the first of its kind in the entire country.

   All DeSantis could do was sign the bill or veto it. He signed. Of course he did. He did the right thing. If he’d vetoed SB2006, the quarantine law would have remained in place anyway. At the time, I publicly argued with a clutch of hardcore medical-freedom conservatives who DID want the Governor to VETO the bill, BECAUSE it didn’t remove the quarantine provision, even though that wouldn’t have resolved anything, but they felt it would “send a message” to the Legislature.

   Sending that “message” would have hurt millions of Floridians suffering under oppressive local democrat governments — especially kids — and so I argued for DeSantis to SIGN the bill. It wasn’t a perfect bill. There’s no such thing. SB2006 was a very, very, very good bill. It was the best bill anyone passed anywhere in the country.

   Normally after I get this far in the explanation, conservatives separate into two camps: the larger group of people who understand the reality that DeSantis had nothing whatsoever to do with the quarantine law, and another, smaller group that I just can’t figure out — are they lefty moles or radical libertarians? — who will never, ever forgive the Governor for not vetoing SB2006.

   The left has been pushing this story to hurt the Governor.

   Let’s talk about Florida’s goofy quarantine law.

   ? Florida’s quarantine law is arguably as bad as the one Kathy Hochul tried to setup in New York. My good friend and heroic small-firm lawyer Bobbie Ann Cox — who’s way more courageous than I was, because she lives and works in NEW YORK — single-handedly defeated that odious and over-reaching regulation in New York State court.

   Bobbie has explained to me that New York’s STATUTORY quarantine law includes due process protections. This is NOT the same one Hochul tried to pass; Hochul wanted to remove all due process and streamline mass quarantines. Because it includes due process, New York’s original statutory law is probably a template for what Florida’s law SHOULD look like.

   Florida’s quarantine law gives the “State Health Officer” the power to do various things in the face of a public health emergency. Once the state declares an emergency, the health officer can order an “individual” to be examined, tested, isolated or quarantined “for communicable diseases that have significant morbidity or mortality and present a severe danger to public health.”

   The quarantine law includes religious and conscience exemptions for everything except isolation and quarantine. Prior to this year’s legislative session, the statute allowed the state health officer to “vaccinate” infected Floridians. The legislature fixed that part.

   The big problem is, Florida’s quarantine law includes ZERO due process. Due process is a person’s ability to challenge a state official’s decision and have it reviewed by a court.

   So far, so awful. It’s a rubbish law, and it needs to be significantly revised.

   It is also completely unconstitutional, and should be thrown out the first time anyone challenges it. Here’s why.

   ? I found the quarantine statute before anybody. I’m not exaggerating or bragging. I found it during my research in April 2020, when I was gearing up to fight the first county-wide mask mandate in Florida. I worried it was going to be a problem, and I thought about fighting it on the threshold grounds that covid was not a disease with “significant morbidity or mortality” nor did it “present a severe danger to public health.”

   In my research, I learned that Florida’s quarantine law had been first passed in the early 2000’s after the Anthrax scares. I also found it had never ever been used, not one single time. There was zero case law. No court had ever had a chance to rule on it. I worried what the courts might do.

   But not long after that, I discovered the key to beating the mask mandate in Florida: Article 23 of the Florida Constitution, the fundamental right to privacy, which includes a right to bodily autonomy. The Right to Privacy would also defeat this odious quarantine law, at least for covid. So I started legally disassembling mask mandates, keeping the Right to Privacy in my back pocket if I ever needed it against quarantines or forced vaccinations.

   Part of my job as a lawyer is to fairly and accurately predict my opponents’ arguments. Typhoid Mary is the best argument FOR a state quarantine power. Typhoid Mary is a person with an asymptomatic communicable disease who defies multiple court orders to stop working in restaurant kitchens. You might disagree on libertarian grounds, but there IS a fair argument that Typhoid Mary might have to be restrained by the state’s police power — after everything else fails.

   If you allow that SOME quarantine power is a legitimate use of state police power, the question becomes how strictly it should be limited. The Florida Constitution says it has to be VERY strictly limited, and it MUST provide due process. The current statute fails on both counts.

   I would file a lawsuit in a New York minute if I could. But the law has never been used. Nobody has standing to challenge it yet. The courts can’t fix it, not yet. So at this point, all of us — including the Governor — depend on the Legislature to fix it, and the truth is, it hasn’t been high on their list of priorities. It’d be great if they could look into this in the next legislative session.

   Maybe one of our Florida lawmaker readers could advance this extremely popular issue. Just saying. I’d give it lots of great attention in Coffee & Covid.

   The bottom line is: claiming Governor DeSantis had anything to do with this law is just a lefty psyop smear. He didn’t have anything to do with it