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Connecticut Officials Are Sued Over Ebola Quarantines in 2014

Connecticut Public Radio | By Lori Mack

Published February 8, 2016 at 1:23 PM EST

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Gov. Malloy with state agency heads at the Emergency Operations Center in Hartford in October 2014.

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Ryan Boyko, former Yale doctoral student, speaks at left, with fellow plaintiffs Assunta Nimley-Phillips, center, and Henri Wilson at right, board member of the Liberian Community Association of Connecticut.

Lori Mack

Several people quarantined in Connecticut after returning from West Africa during the Ebola epidemic in 2014 have filed a class-action lawsuit against state health officials, saying they were essentially imprisoned based on politics and not any legal or scientific reason.

Yale Law School students filed the federal lawsuit Monday.

A West African family of six and a current student from Yale’s school of public health are among the plaintiffs who say they were unjustifiably quarantined. Ryan Boyko, a former doctoral student at Yale, was working in Liberia to help stop the spread of the disease. When he left Liberia he tested negative for Ebola, but when he came back to Connecticut things spun out of control quickly.

"I developed a fever related to an infection I’d had for a number of months," he said. "I understand why I had to go to Yale New Haven hospital then. And why I was isolated while I was admitted to the hospital. But during my hospital stay I tested negative for Ebola twice more, my fever declined and I had no further symptoms."

The lawsuit claims none of the plaintiffs quarantined had been in contact with anyone exhibiting Ebola symptoms.

Assunta Nimley-Phillips had six family members who had just moved to the U.S. from Liberia quarantined in her basement in West Haven. She said her family arrived completely healthy.

"Their first morning in America the children went outside to see their new home... The next door neighbor saw them and called her child to leave from the outside, because she thought they were dangerous," she said.

The suit was filed by the Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School against Governor Dannel Malloy and Connecticut's acting and former health commissioners. It seeks unspecified monetary damages and an injunction preventing similar quarantines in the future. In a statement, Robert Blanchard, spokesperson for the Attorney General’s office, said they will review the complaint and respond at the appropriate time.

The lawsuit's based on a study titled "Fear, Politics, and Ebola: How Quarantines Hurt the Fight Against Ebola and Violate the Constitution" by the ACLU and the Yale Global Health Justice Partnership. It was released in December.