Florida has a Republican governor, a Republican-led state House, and Republican-led state Senate. However, it also has some of America’s harshest forced quarantine and public health laws. Some activists plan to change this situation.
During the pandemic, state governments gave themselves unconstitutional amounts of power to quarantine every resident, McBride said. In Florida, these laws were revised in minor ways and re-signed into law.
The law states that the state health officer can order people examined, tested, treated, isolated, or quarantined during a public health emergency. The state health officer can isolate or quarantine anyone who is believed to pose a danger to public health. Under Florida law, police can be compelled to enforce these laws even if they don’t want to.
Florida also passed Statute 768.381 early in the pandemic. This law was designed to protect hospitals from medical lawsuits when patients died of COVID-19, McBride said.
“It basically says you get a free pass as a hospital or medical provider if you follow a government-issued treatment protocol,” he said.
California Dreaming
According to Tom Oltorik, Florida state director of the medical freedom group MoveFreelyAmerica.org, Florida’s quarantine laws are severe—beyond the wildest dreams of liberal states like New York and California.
“It is the worst ‘forced quarantine, forced treatment’ language in the country,” he said. “It’s worse than New York state’s laws. The people in Washington state and California would dream of having laws like this.”
The Florida law doesn’t mention any way quarantined people can appeal their sentence.
“They’re not constitutionally friendly,” Oltorik said of the Florida medical laws. “They don’t protect the people. They protect the institutions.”
Ironically, one of America’s harshest quarantine laws is on the books in a state where the current governor strongly supports loose COVID-19 regulations, he said.
Under Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida was one of the first states to reopen during the pandemic. DeSantis also signed executive orders and legislation to end local COVID-19 restrictions, vaccine mandates, and mask mandates.
Given this record on COVID-19, DeSantis and Florida’s GOP-led House and Senate would likely not use Statute 381.00315, Oltorik said.
But the law is still on the books, he added. In the future, Floridians could face harsh crackdowns in the name of public health under different leadership.
“When Gov. DeSantis leaves office, the statutes are very alarming and could be used by a more liberally minded governor to lock the state down,” Oltorik said.
For the first 60 days after declaring a public health emergency, Florida’s state health officer has immense power to urge health measures on Florida residents. If residents refuse, the state health officer can order them quarantined. In cases where quarantines aren’t practical, the state health officer can force treatments. A 2019 judges guide opines that the state health officer could force vaccinations under Florida Statute 381.003(1)(e), which remains on Florida’s books.
Misguiding Guidelines
Another COVID-19 law, Statute 768.381, has encouraged Florida hospitals and doctors to continue using less-effective methods to treat COVID-19 patients, said Dr. Avery Brinkley. Brinkley has over 40 years of experience in medicine.The text of Statute 768.381 states that any patient suing hospitals for the mistreatment of COVID-19 must prove that doctors committed gross negligence or intentional misconduct.
But if hospitals prove they followed government protocols to the best of their ability, they aren’t liable for a lawsuit, the law states.
Brinkley said that this rule has encouraged hospitals to follow outdated CDC protocols instead of providing the best known care to patients.
“I’ve never seen in my entire career, such corruption—really collusion and corruption—between the federal agencies and big pharma,” he said.
According to Brinkley, the CDC’s approaches haven’t been the best from the onset of the pandemic. Although the vaccines worked to help patients infected with the first strain of the virus, they are less effective now, he said.
And the CDC recommends prescribing antiviral drugs too late in the disease, he said. “They don’t give it early when replication is occurring, which is over [after] about the first five days of the illness.”
It also recommends getting COVID-19 shots. But compared to other vaccines, the COVID-19 ones have more unknowns about their safety and long term impacts, he said.
“We don’t even know all the long-term side effects,” Brinkley said. “Now, we have vaccine injuries, which are an enigma. Now we’re seeing more and more of them: neurologic, vascular, infertility, early miscarries, increased incidence of cancers,” although any direct link to the vaccine remains unclear.
Moreover, the CDC doesn’t recommend drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, he said. These drugs have a good track record against COVID-19, as reported by doctors using them in independent approaches to COVID-19 treatment.
Brinkley got COVID-19, and credits hydroxychloroquine with his recovery.
“I know it works because it cured me overnight,” he said. “It sounds miraculous, but it’s true.”
For patients, Statute 768.381 has resulted in worse medical treatment and unnecessary COVID-19 deaths, he said.
No Cases
Despite the issues these laws cause, repealing them isn’t as simple as filing a lawsuit and going to court, McBride said. Statute 381.00315 has rarely seen use, and courts need cases.
“You can’t just go to court and say, ‘I don’t like that law, let’s try to make it unconstitutional,’” he said. “Usually, they want to see it being used or in action.”
In a court case, Statute 381.00315 would likely be invalidated because it violates due process, he said. But it can’t go to court unless the government starts enforcing it. Lawsuits are also unpredictable, he added.
As a result, the legal fight against it must run on lobbying rather than lawsuits.
“There’s just not a live case right now,” he said. “They’re not actually using the law right now, but they did assert their knowledge of the law and willingness to potentially use it in certain state forms in 2020.”
McBride, Oltorik, and others have run a lobbying campaign to change Statute 381.00315. Currently, the campaign is focusing on persuading legislators, but McBride said that with more resources, the group would like to amend Florida’s Constitution.
“It’s expensive with a lot of paperwork, but we’ve looked at the possibility,” he said.
On Statute 768.381, the situation is more complex, Oltorik said. Although the law was originally designed to expire in May 2022, last-minute lobbying efforts by hospitals got legislators to extend indemnity for hospitals.
“We found out that they had rushed it through the House, the House tabled it, handed it to the Senate who ... everything was passed unanimously, and [they] forwarded it to the governor for signature based on a bunch of inaccuracies.”
Although Move Freely America and other activist groups urged DeSantis to veto the bill, the governor didn’t veto the bill, Oltorik said.
“It was very disappointing for us,” he said.
