TRENTON, New Jersey — Gov. Chris Christie and other public health officials who are defendants in a federal lawsuit filed by Kaci Hickox, the nurse who lived in Fort Kent and was quarantined in New Jersey after returning from treating patients with Ebola in Africa during 2014, are asking the lawsuit be dismissed.
“On her return to the U.S., four separate readings revealed that she had an elevated temperature,” states the 60-page motion to dismiss filed Friday by New Jersey Deputy Attorney General Benjamin H. Zieman on behalf of John J. Hoffman, Acting Attorney General for New Jersey. “Public health officials, acting in the same best traditions of their profession, properly had her quarantined.”
Hickox filed the federal lawsuit in October, claiming she was held illegally and unconstitutionally against her will as part of a mandatory quarantine for anyone returning from certain West African countries who treated patients with Ebola. Her attorneys claim Christie, then-Commissioner of Health Mary O’Dowd and other New Jersey health officials imprisoned her illegally through the quarantine. The complaint also said Christie, who is running for President, made false statements about Hickox’s health and implied she had symptoms of Ebola. Hickox has said Christie’s decision to quarantine her was based on fear, not science, and was politically motivated.
“There’s no question that the woman is ill, the question is what is her illness,” Christie said, according to the court document. “It’s not definitive — at least it was not definitive the last time I checked, which was about three hours ago when I called.”
By saying she was ill, Hickox claims, the governor put her “in a false light before the public.”
In addition, the lawsuit alleged the quarantine violated her constitutional rights to due process and illegally deprived her of her liberty.
There are a litany of grounds on which to dismiss Hickox’s claims, the motion to dismiss states. They include “(1) Ms. Hickox has not pleaded and cannot plead a clearly established right to have avoided quarantine in her particular circumstances; (2) Defendants have quarantine immunity under state law; and (3) Ms. Hickox has not pleaded facts to plausibly indicate that any statement about her was made with the requisite malice.
“Because these defects are insurmountable and cannot be cured by amendment, Ms. Hickox’s complaint should be dismissed with prejudice,” it states.
Hickox volunteered to treat patients suffering from Ebola in Sierra Leone as part of Doctors Without Borders during the 2014 outbreak and was honored with other health care professionals as Time Magazine’s 2014 “Person of the Year.” She returned stateside and landed at Newark Liberty International Airport on Oct. 24, 2014, and was in quarantine for 80 hours, at the airport and in a modified garage at the University Hospital in Newark.
Upon her release, she returned to Maine, where Gov. Paul LePage and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services attempted through a proposed court order to prevent Hickox from entering public places and tried unsuccessfully to confine her to her Fort Kent home for 21 days, according to a previously published report.
Maine Chief District Court Judge Charles LaVerdiere refused to grant the order. He found DHHS had failed to prove that limiting Hickox’s movement was necessary to protect others from the dangers of the Ebola virus. In his order, LaVerdiere noted the irrational fears about Ebola and “misconceptions, misinformation, bad science and bad information being spread from shore to shore in our country” about the virus.
Hickox is seeking a minimum of $250,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, according to the complaint, along with legal fees and costs.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey is working with two New York law firms to represent Hickox, according to a news release issued by the ACLU of New Jersey when the her lawsuit was filed. It’s expected that Hickox will file an answer to the motion to dismiss.
Judge Kevin McNulty is scheduled to take up the matter and possibly make a decision Feb. 12.
Bangor Daily News writer Judy Harrison contributed to this report.