Kids With COVID Symptoms Can't be Quarantined Without Parental Consent

20th August 2020

Kids With COVID Symptoms Can't be Quarantined Without Parental Consent

No legislation called the “COVID Act” exists in the US (Getty Images)

The Claim

Under the "COVID Act," school officials in the US can quarantine children with COVID-19 symptoms outside their family home without their parents' or guardians' consent.

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Emerging story

In August 2020, as states and school districts have been grappling with how best to open their doors in the fall in order to allow the nations’ children’s education to have continuity, rumors have been circulating on social media that schools have the ability to quarantine children for COVID symptoms without consent of their parents. Versions of the same claim have circulated in the UK, Australia, Canada, and Ireland.

Misbar’s Analysis

Misbar’s investigation into this claim reveals it to be false. No legislation called the “COVID Act” exists in the US and a survey of COVID legislation passed since the start of the pandemic shows no cases in which children can be detained or quarantined without parent consent. Furthermore, there is considerable court precedent that parents and children have the constitutional right not to be separated. According to one case at the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit:

“Parents and children have a well-elaborated constitutional right to live together without governmental interference […]. That right is an essential liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee that parents and children will not be separated by the state without due process of law except in an emergency.”