WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s plans to screen certain airline passengers for exposure to Ebola are based on the Constitution and long-established legal authority that would almost certainly stand up in court if challenged, public health experts say.

Airline passengers arriving from three West African countries — Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — will face temperature checks using no-touch thermometers and other screening measures at five U.S. airports, starting with New York’s Kennedy International on Saturday. The measures, aimed at identifying sickly passengers from countries experiencing the Ebola outbreak, will expand over the next week to Newark Liberty, Washington Dulles, Chicago’s O’Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international airports.

Though airline passengers may find it intrusive to have their temperature taken or directed against their wishes to seek medical care, the government has wide power when it comes to public health and border control, experts say, including quarantine and isolation. Courts would likely defer to the judgment of public health professionals in the event someone sued over what they saw as an intrusion of civil liberties.