The Rights of People Who Are HIV Positive : The Basic ACLU Guide to the Rights of People Living with HIV Disease and AIDS

First and foremost, HIV disease presents a profound medical problem affecting a person’s health and longevity. Yet health and health care cannot be viewed outside of the social context. We cannot, William B. Rubenstein, Ruth Eisenberg, and Lawrence O. Gostin insist, lose sight of the fact that the questions involved in living with HIV disease are often human rights issues that are negotiated through the legal system. Can a hospital refuse to treat me because I’m infected? Can my insurance company terminate my coverage? Will the government deport me? Who has a right to know of my health status?

The health policies, practices, and programs generated by the HIV epidemic also give rise to legal questions: Can doctors be forcibly tested and removed from practice if they are infected with HIV? Can hospital patients be required to have HIV tests? What are the responsibilities of a pregnant woman with HIV infection? Do school children have a right to information about HIV disease?

In fact, legal questions affecting HIV-positive people have grown tremendously complex, cutting across multiple areas of life as well as of law. Using the question-and-answer format common to all ACLU handbooks, this book makes clear how to take advantage of the laws designed to secure the rights of people who are HIV positive.

The authors have divided the book into four sections. The first five chapters provide background information about HIV disease and about the public health response to the epidemic. The second five chapters deal with day-to-day issues: health care decisions, private and public insurance, available public benefits, planning in consideration of future incapacity and death, and issues of HIV within families. The third section considers discrimination against people with HIV in accessing health care, in places of public accommodation, in the workplace, and in the housing market. The book concludes with a look at HIV in schools and prisons and among immigrants and drug users.

William B. Rubenstein is a visiting professor at Stanford Law School and a lecturer at Harvard Law School.

Ruth Eisenberg is of counsel to the Washington, D.C., law firm of Harmon, Curran, Gallagher, and Spielberg, where she specializes in disability rights and employment law.

Lawrence O. Gostin is a professor of law and public health and the co-director of the Georgetown/Johns Hopkins University on Law and Public Health.