As I've pointed out before, typhoid mary spent her final years in prison because she refused to adhere to common sense policies put in place to protect the public.
"While states are given broad authority, there are some limits on what they can do in the name of protecting public health. Basically, they can’t do anything “arbitrary, oppressive and unreasonable,” a legal standard applied when people claim a public health law infringes on their freedom.
"Another claim Hickox could pursue is false imprisonment — the crime of restraining someone without justification. Given court deference to state authority on public health matters, this claim is unlikely to succeed.
"Consider
the case of Mary Crayton. In 1911, New York health officials quarantined her for 15 days because she lived in a house close to someone with smallpox. Crayton said they never proved she’d been exposed. She sued the state for wrongful imprisonment and other damages, claiming health officials made townspeople think she’d been exposed to “a loathsome disease, was unfit to be at large or pursue her occupation, and thereby deprived her of her earnings, injured her feelings, held her up to ridicule, and caused her to be shunned by her fellow citizens.”
She lost. A state appeals court ruled that even an error in judgment on the part of health officials didn’t amount to “unreasonable and arbitrary” action."
Why Kaci Hickox might lose a legal battle against Ebola quarantine - The Washington Post