NYS Public Health Legal Manual: A Guide for Judges, Attorneys ...

NEW YORK STATE PUBLIC HEALTH LEGAL MANUAL § 1.0
[1.0] I. INTRODUCTION
Recent outbreaks of potentially deadly communicable diseases, as well
as a growing awareness of society’s vulnerability to deliberate threats to
public health, have required that greater attention be paid to the legal
issues governing the handling of public health disaster emergencies.
Many of the statutes governing responses to public health emergencies
have not been revised for decades, and the application of those statutes to
a contemporary world has become more complicated. This Legal Manual
is an effort to assist judges, lawyers, and public health officials and practitioners
in sorting through the myriad statutes and rules governing public
health, and in applying the overriding constitutional principles that balance
individual rights with societal health requirements.
The Manual addresses the laws governing control of the spread of
communicable diseases and the laws governing abatement of nuisances,
such as radiological and chemical contamination, that may cause public
health emergencies. It does not specifically address statutes governing air
and water pollution, but the principles discussed can be readily applied to
public health emergencies from those sources as well.
Because the statutes and rules governing responses to public health
emergencies contain gaps, and because the application of these statutes is
fraught with constitutional issues, the Manual contains “commentary”
sections that discuss how the existing law may be applied to these public
health issues. These commentaries, as well as any constitutional analysis
preceding the commentaries, are solely the views of the authors and are
intended to be helpful, not definitive. Judges, of course, ultimately make
their own decisions of how the law should apply.
One of the anomalies of the New York Public Health Law is that many
of its provisions governing control of contagious diseases and nuisances
do not apply to New York City. Consequently, where appropriate, the
Manual contains separate references to the provisions of the New York
City Health Code, New York City Charter and New York City Administrative
Code that address these areas. The New York City provisions are
almost always consistent with the Public Health Law provisions.
1