Though somewhat hard to imagine in 2025 with COVID-mania in our rearview mirrors, the truth of the matter is that the highest court in New York, the Court of Appeals, has unbelievably opened the door for quarantine camps to become a reality. I have fought the governor in court for the past three years to prevent quarantine camps from taking hold, and I was successful to some extent (the Department of Health cannot currently throw you into a quarantine facility), but ultimately the State has been given the green light by our courts. A unimaginable travesty of justice!
When COVID-19 hit back in March of 2020, the NYS Legislature (illegally, I might add) gave then-governor Andrew Cuomo the power to make “directives” (read “laws”). Continuing with the illegal trend, Cuomo then passed that power on to the Department of Health (DoH). The DoH then created the “Isolation and Quarantine Procedures” regulation, which the public rightly dubbed the “Quarantine Camp” reg. The regulation was not a law, as it did not come from the NYS Legislature. Instead, it was a reg written by unelected bureaucrats who answer to nobody but the bureaucrat or politician who hired them. The reg actually conflicted with our long-standing (full-of-due-process-protections) quarantine law that was passed by the Legislature in 1953. Regs cannot conflict with laws! That is a violent breach of Separation of Powers, which is the cornerstone of our free society.