First cases of Zika transmission in the U.S. are reported in Florida today

Today, CNN was the first to break the story that four cases of Zika have been found in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, Florida. The Florida governor made the announcement at a press conference. In an unprecedented legal step, the counties' public health authority is going door to door to test the urine of residents in this one zip code area to determine if there are other infections. The urine test is less invasive of privacy interests than a blood test, and will also be easier to administer with less skill required to do the testing. Based on the call for voluntary testing from the public health department in other notices, this door-to-door testing is likely voluntary, not mandatory. It will be interesting to see how the county may deal with refusals for a urine test. If the public health authority ordered the residents in the zip code to submit to a urine test, the judicial test to issue an order would be that the public health interest outweighed the privacy interest, and there was no less invasive way of accomplishing the governmental goal. It is unlikely we will see that case, but the question may arise in some other context in the future.