By Justin Hsieh
The federal government said that it would not move quarantined coronavirus patients to Costa Mesa on Friday after city officials went to court earlier last week to obtain an injunction against a federal plan to house the patients in a state facility in the city.
“The federal defendants have decided not to move forward with the challenged proposal,” assistant U.S. attorney Daniel Beck said in a court filing. “As a result, the court should dissolve the temporary restraining order and dismiss this action.”
The filing ended a week of frantic legal action and community outcry against a federal plan to relocate anywhere from 30 to 50 patients currently quarantined at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, Calif. to Costa Mesa’s Fairview Developmental Center, a vacant state hospital formerly used for people with developmental disabilities.
The plan, which followed a military request that coronavirus patients be moved off its bases to eliminate the risk of exposing troops, would have involved transferring patients who had tested positive for the virus but were not ill enough to require hospitalization to Fairview Developmental Center as early as Sunday, Feb. 23.
When Costa Mesa officials were notified of the plan by the California Office of Emergency Services on the evening of Thursday, Feb. 20, however, they were alarmed by what they described as a lack of information regarding the details of the facility’s intended use and the precautions that would be taken to prevent disease transmission in the city. The following day, city officials filed a request in federal court for an emergency injunction against the transfer.
“Plaintiffs now seek to prevent Costa Mesa from becoming ground zero to a state and potentially nation-wide public health crisis caused because the state and federal governments have not sought to include local officials and emergency personnel in the planning and execution of their efforts,” the city wrote in its request.
U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton granted the city’s request and on Feb. 21 issued a temporary restraining order barring federal and state officials from transporting patients infected with or exposed to coronavirus to any site in Costa Mesa. Staton set a hearing on an expedited basis for Monday, Feb. 24 to review the situation.
“As a result of the defendants’ plan to move patients infected with the coronavirus (aka COVID-19) into Costa Mesa, California… without conducting an adequate site survey or providing sufficient safeguards against transmission of the disease, Plaintiffs face the threat of an immediate and irreparable injury,” Judge Staton wrote in the order.
Federal and state officials protested the city’s action, which they called “ill-informed and legally baseless.” Officials said that multiple alternative sites had been considered, that if Fairview Developmental Center was chosen patients would be transferred with appropriate health and safety precautions and that the risk of transmission to the community would be “negligible.”
“Fear of COVID-19 does not justify such unprecedented intrusion into federal quarantine decisions by the specialized agencies responsible for this area,” federal defendants wrote in a court filing on Sunday, Feb. 23. “Using [Fairview Developmental Center] would be better for public health than the alternatives, which consist of using hospitals or home isolation.”
Costa Mesa Mayor Katrina Foley charged on Friday that the federal and state actors behind the plan had failed to provide the city with adequate information about how Fairview Developmental Center was selected and vetted, and whether any plans were in place to repair the facility—which, she noted, had earlier in the month been deemed by state officials to be inadequate to serve as a homeless shelter. In the city’s request for an injunction, she called on federal and state officials to “stop acting under the cover of darkness.”
In response, the federal government said in its Sunday court filings that “there is no requirement that a federal agency consult with an incorporate local government any time the agency makes decisions; indeed, such a requirement would cripple the federal government.”
On Monday, Judge Staton ruled to keep the restraining order in place until state and federal authorities provided more details about the transfer plan, ordering them to meet with city and county officials to answer questions and setting a second hearing for March 2.
“We are grateful that the judge saw through the inconsistencies in the federal and state positions, and has extended the restraining order,” Foley said in a press release Monday. “While we have nothing but compassion for those who are suffering from this virus, the health and welfare of our community is our top priority. Bringing those infected into this densely populated area is simply the wrong approach.”
Throughout the week, various groups filed or prepared to file amicus briefs in support of Foley and Costa Mesa’s action, including Orange County, the city of Newport Beach, the city of Huntington Beach, the city of Laguna Beach, the Ocean View School District (OVSD) and the Orange County Business Council. Newport Beach cited potential impacts to the city’s tourist economy that might arise from the presence of coronavirus patients, while the OVSD raised concerns over the proximity of Fairview Developmental Center to several of its facilities.
“Fairview is located within a couple of miles of [OVSD] boundaries in Huntington Beach and dozens of other schools, parks, athletic fields, shopping centers and restaurants used by OVSD students, teachers and staff,” the OVSD wrote in its amicus brief. “If there is an outbreak of a communicable disease in the Costa Mesa/Huntington Beach area, OVSD will be impacted by it.”
City officials met with state and federal representatives on Thursday in an attempt to receive answers to their questions about plans for Fairview Developmental Center. While Foley said officials failed to provide the specific information city officials were looking for, and left the city with continuing concerns about the plan, federal representatives called the meeting “informative and productive.” Nonetheless, on Friday the federal government said they were effectively closing the issue when they announced they would not be using Fairview Developmental Center.
“The federal government has no plans to use the Fairview Developmental Center, or any other facility in Costa Mesa, to house individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19,” Beck wrote in a court filing.
Both city and state officials, however, mentioned lingering concerns over federal, state and city authority in the handling of communicable diseases such as the coronavirus.
“This is at least a temporary victory for the citizens of Costa Mesa and Orange County,” Foley said. “But the government has not promised not to place future infected persons there, so the battle is not over. We will continue to ask the court to prohibit the government from using this completely inappropriate facility for housing people infected with a highly communicable and potentially fatal disease.
On the other hand, the California Health and Human Services Agency said that while the federal government had informed the state that Fairview Developmental Center was no longer needed because quarantined patients were at “the imminent end of their isolation,” the city’s action had “prevented Fairview from being available at a time when it was critically needed.”
Similarly, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said that the prospect of individual cities being able to exercise a “local veto” to block state or federal disease control plans would “fly in the face of a compelling need for a centralized state authority to control and manage communicable disease outbreaks.”
Questions about how best to handle communicable diseases at the city, state and federal levels will likely only continue as what some fear is the beginning of a global coronavirus pandemic escalates. Over 60 people in the United States have tested positive for the virus, and this morning Seattle officials announced the first death from the virus in the United States.
“Ultimately, we expect we will see coronavirus spread in this country,” Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Nancy Messonnier said on Tuesday. “It’s not so much a question of if, but a question of when.”
Globally, the disease has sickened over 85,000 people in 56 countries, killed more than 2,900 and sent the stock market into its worst weekly decline since the 2008 financial crisis. On Wednesday, Orange County declared a local health emergency in response to the disease’s escalation and the potential of patients being transported into the county. The county has not yet had an outbreak, although according to officials one resident has tested positive but since fully recovered.
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