Compagnie Francaise de Navigation a Vapeur v. Louisiana Board of Health

Compagnie Francaise de Navigation a Vapeur v. Louisiana Board of Health, 186 U.S. 380 (1902), was a United States Supreme Court case which held  constitutional state laws requiring the involuntary quarantine of individuals to prevent the spread of disease. Louisiana's quarantine laws, Justice Edward White said, were a reasonable exercise of the state's police power that conflicted with neither the Dormant Commerce Clause nor the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment . In dissent , Justice Henry Billings Brown , joined by John Marshall Harlan , agreed that while quarantine laws were constitutional, Louisiana's went beyond the scope of the state's authority over interstate commerce , even violating several treaties between the United States and other nations.

The case had arisen in 1898, when the S.S. Britannia sailed from Palermo to Marseille , then across the Atlantic for New Orleans . Before docking there, it had stopped at a state-run quarantine station further down the Mississippi River , where all 408 passengers, most of whom were Italian immigrants , were certified as free from disease. At New Orleans, however, the ship was not allowed to land them there nor in any nearby parish , as it was told that a _cordon sanitaire _ had been declared on land, forbidding the entry of any uninfected persons into the area.

Compagnie Française de Navigation à Vapeur ("French Steam Navigation Company", in English), the Britannia's French owner, filed for a restraining order in Orleans Parish District Court enjoining the state Board of Health from enforcing the quarantine, arguing that the real purpose of the quarantine was to prevent the immigrants from landing in New Orleans; after the court declined the Britannia took its passengers to Pensacola, Florida , to be unloaded and then returned to New Orleans to deliver its cargo. The company's complaint against the state for damages was dismissed, a decision upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court on appeal.

Quarantine laws had never been challenged, but _dicta _ in the Court's opinions since _Gibbons v. Ogden _ in 1824 had recognized them as a justifiable use of state power. Some earlier cases had challenged aspects of quarantine laws such as the taxes collected to fund them, but Compagnie Francaise challenged the application of quarantine law itself, under the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. It has been cited by later courts as holding involuntary quarantines constitutional, as recently as a case arising from the 2014 African Ebola epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic .

Contents

• 1 Background

• 2 Underlying dispute

• 3 Louisiana Supreme Court

• 4 Supreme Court

  • 4.1 Majority opinion

  • 4.2 Dissenting opinion

• 5 Subsequent jurisprudence and commentary

• 6 See also

• 7 Notes

• 8 References

• 9 External links

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Compagnie_Francaise_de_Navigation_a_Vapeur_v._Louisiana_Board_of_Health&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Background")

Starting in 1796, when it was under Spanish colonial administration , New Orleans began suffering outbreaks of yellow fever every few years, and reported cases every summer. Death tolls began increasing, both from the disease and some then-common treatments for it (such as mercury injections), as the city's population grew following its return to French rule in 1800 and cession to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase three years later. The first American territorial governor, William C. C. Claiborne , lost two wives and his daughter to the disease, which he himself also contracted but recovered from.

Many other migrants from elsewhere in the U.S. followed; they proved more susceptible to yellow fever than longtime residents. An 1817 outbreak killed 800 in New Orleans alone, prompting the state legislature to create a New Orleans Board of Health, the first government public health agency in the U.S., only to dissolve it two years later as ineffectual after an outbreak that year claimed 2,000 lives. These deaths were often exacerbated by local newspapers' refusal to report on the disease, as businesses feared the economic effects of a public panic. It was not known that yellow fever was transmitted via mosquitos until Walter Reed 's research in 1901; before then, the most common theory blamed infection on atmospheric miasma .

After an 1853 outbreak left almost 8,000 residents of New Orleans dead, the state again created a Board of Health and made it permanent. The Union Navy 's blockade of New Orleans six years later, as the Civil War began, the city for the first time in the century recorded no deaths from yellow fever. When General Benjamin Butler took over control of the city when it fell to Union forces in 1862, he went further , dispatching 2,000 troops to dispose of the city's garbage and instituting a quarantine requirement for arriving ships. At a point 70 miles (110 km) down the Mississippi River from the city, all vessels were stopped by gunboats and held for 40 days while they were monitored for disease. There were few deaths from yellow fever in New Orleans for the remainder of the war.

Gravestone for family killed by 1878 yellow fever outbreak in New Orlean

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