Law professor Leslie Wolf of Georgia State University College of Law is available to discuss the constitutionality of Ebola quarantines both in Georgia and elsewhere.

“The Constitution permits the government to restrict individual liberty to protect public health, where, as with Ebola, there is a need to do so,” Wolf says. “But it also limits the government to the least restrictive means.”

Particular to Georgia, she says “the new rules require quarantining of travelers without symptoms, but with direct exposure to Ebola patients, do not meet the least restrictive means test, although monitoring of other travelers without symptoms does.”

Wolf is a professor of law and director of the Center for Health, Law & Society at Georgia State University College of Law. From 2008-2012, Professor Wolf was a member of the CDC’s Ethics Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee to the Director. Work on the Subcommittee including recommendations for allocation of ventilators during a public health emergency and development of training in public health ethics. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1991 and her Master in Public Health from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 1997. Before coming to Georgia State, she was on faculty with the Program in Medical Ethics at University of San Francisco, California.

Wolf’s biography is at http://law.gsu.edu/profile/leslie-e-wolf/.