World AIDS Day

Lambda Legal is urging the new administration of President-elect Barack Obama to reverse policies that challenge the human and civil rights of people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States.

As the next U.S. President, Obama will be in a position to eliminate unfair and medically unnecessary barriers to equality for people with HIV. Lambda Legal's HIV Project attorneys have worked with other HIV advocacy groups, including the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago, the ACLU, the Center for HIV Law & Policy and GLAD, to prepare recommendations for the new president about employment and licensing, access to health care and other essential services, HIV criminalization, HIV testing, immigration, prevention and prisons.

Specific recommendations include calling on the new administration to:

• Issue immediately an executive order to ensure that all federal agencies are complying with the federal Rehabilitation Act and are not imposing medically-unwarranted restrictions on employees and applicants living with HIV.

• Direct the Department of Justice to issue official guidance to state officials, clarifying that states' exclusion of people with HIV from occupational training schools and licensing in professions such as barbering, massage, food services and home health care violates federal antidiscrimination law.

• Direct the Surgeon General to re-issue findings reflecting the conclusive scientific evidence showing that needle exchange and syringe access programs reduce drug abuse and prevent HIV infection and urge Congress to lift the ban on federal funding that limits these programs and costs lives.

• Direct the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Transportation to promptly issue regulations implementing the ADA Amendments Act in accordance with its remedial purposes.

For a more comprehensive look at these recommendations, visit "Critical Civil Rights Issues for People Living with HIV/AIDS in the United States."