Kaci Hickox, the Ebola nurse who was forcibly held in an isolation tent in New Jersey for three days, says she will not obey instructions to remain at home in Maine for 21 days.
"I don't plan on sticking to the guidelines," Hickoxtells TODAY's Matt Lauer. "I am not going to sit around and be bullied by politicians and forced to stay in my home when I am not a risk to the American public."
The 33-year-old nurse for Doctors Without Borders was the first person pulled aside at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday under new state regulations after her return from Sierra Leone, where she was working with Ebola patients.
After her public outcry, in which she complained of "inhumane" treatment, Hickox was allowed to leave New Jersey on Monday, traveling by private car to her home in Maine.
Hickox, who shows no symptoms of the deadly virus, says she believes the quarantine policy is "not scientifically nor constitutionally just."
Maine health officials have said they expect her to agree to be quarantined at her home for a 21-day period. The Bangor Daily News reports.
But Hickox tells TODAY she will pursue legal action if Maine forces her into continued isolation. "If the restrictions placed on me by the state of Maine are not lifted by Thursday morning, I will go to court to fight for my freedom," she says.
Hickox agreed to refrain from going out in public for two days, said one of her attorneys, Steven Hyman of the New York law firm McLaughlin & Stern,The Bangor Daily News reports Wednesday.
"She doesn't want to agree to continue to be confined to a residence beyond the two days," Hyman said.
Maine health officials did not immediately respond to Hickox's latest statement, butDepartment of Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew said Tuesday evening that the state has the authority to seek a court order to compel quarantine for individuals deemed a public health risk. She did not mention Hickox by name.
Hickox's high-profile campaign from isolation in New Jersey, including a first-personaccount in The Dallas Morning News, underscored the shifting response to the Ebola crisis by state and federal authorities.
On Friday, New York Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a plan of mandatory quarantine for health workers back from Africa who'd been exposed to Ebola but showed no symptoms.
It was in part a reaction to the case of Craig Spencer, a New York City physician who tested positive for Ebola, but acknowledged he had left his apartment and moved around the city just before experiencing Ebola symptoms.
Saying they couldn't rely on voluntary self-reporting, the governors pronounced themselves resolved to err on the side of caution and monitor people like Spencer under confinement. Cuomo, however, quickly eased those rules, allowing such health workers to self-quarantine at home.
The White House also weighed in, saying it had conveyed concerns to the governors of New York and New Jersey that their stringent quarantine policies were "not grounded in science" and would hamper efforts to recruit volunteers to fight the epidemic in Africa. Christie said he had not heard from the White House before the plan was announced.
After the uproar in New Jersey, HIckox was allowed to leave on Monday, but Christie insisted that it did not represent a change of policy.
"I didn't reverse any decision," he said Tuesday. "She hadn't had any symptoms for 24 hours. And she tested negative for Ebola. So there was no reason to keep her. The reason she was put into the hospital in the first place was because she was running a high fever and was symptomatic."
"If people are symptomatic they go into the hospital," Christie said. "If they live in New Jersey, they get quarantined at home. If they don't, and they're not symptomatic, then we set up quarantine for them out of state. But if they are symptomatic, they're going to the hospital."
Hickox told The Dallas Morning News that her brief fever spike, recorded by a forehead scanner at the airport, was the result of being flushed and angry over her confinement and that an oral temperature reading at the same time showed her to be normal.
Contributing: Rick Hampson in New York; Associated Press
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