In our constitutional system, the States hold general police powers that permit them to enact laws designed to deal with public-health crises. Too this authority, many state legislatures have enacted laws empowering the state governor, or the governor's designee, to issue orders requiring persons present within the State to wear masks, to engage in "social distancing," to quarantine, and/or to be vaccinated during public-health emergencies.

Congress also has enacted a federal statute, known as the Public Health Emergency Act (PHEA), authorizing the President or the President's designee--the Center for Disease Control (CDC)--to issue orders responsive to public-health emergencies. The PHEA authorizes agents of the CDC to temporarily detain and to test for infection persons entering or leaving the United States if it "reasonably believes" those persons are infected with a "life-threatening communicable disease." The PHEA further authorizes agents of the CDC to temporarily detain and test for infection (1) persons "moving or about to move from one State to another State," and (2) persons who are a "likely source of infection to other individuals who are or imminently will be moving from one State to another State." Finally, the PHEA authorizes agents of the CDC to quarantine individuals who are "actually infected" with a "life-threatening communicable disease" until such time as tests show that the infected individuals "are no longer contagious." The PHEA does not explicitly confer on the President, the CDC, or the CDC's agents authority to issue mask mandates, social-distancing mandates, or vaccination mandates.

1. Did Congress likely have constitutional authority to enact the PHEA? Answer yes or no and concisely explain your answer by citing to any applicable constitutional provisions, constitutional doctrines/tests, and/or cases you should not address any question of individual constitutional rights such as the right to travel, to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, to due process, or to equal protection under the law.

2. If a state were to enact a law prohibiting agents of the CDC from detaining or quarantining under the PHEA any protesting individual without a determination by a state administrative-law judge that the individual is infected with a life-threatening communicable disease, would that state law likely be constitutional? (Assume for purposes of this answer that the PHEA is constitutional regardless of how you answered question 1.) Answer yes or no and concisely explain your answer by citing to any applicable constitutional provisions, constitutional doctrines/tests, and/or cases.