HIV

Highlights of Lambda Legal's HIV and health care fairness work in 2014 and goals for 2015.

In the early years of the AIDS crisis, as the medical establishment grappled with the little-understood disease, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services decided to ban blood donations from gay and bisexual men, ostensibly to protect the nation’s blood supply.

Q: I have been working at the same company for a few years, and am generally happy there. I recently tested positive for HIV, and was wondering – could I get fired if my boss found out about my HIV status?

On World AIDS Day 2014, Lambda Legal urges those tasked with enforcing U.S. criminal law—from governors to prosecutors to police detectives—to halt the criminal prosecution of people based on their HIV status, thereby assisting efforts to combat the misconceptions, fear, stereotypes, discrimination and stigma faced by people living with HIV that fuel the epidemic in the U.S. and around the world.

Lambda Legal is working to eliminate criminal prosecutions that turn exclusively on a person’s HIV status.

In anticipation of the 2015 Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a comprehensive assessment of the human rights record of all UN member countries, Lambda Legal has authored a set of UPR comments surrounding the policing, detention and incarceration of LGBT people and people living with HIV.

Lambda Legal is proud to announce that HIV Project Director Scott Schoettes has been appointed to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

In response to an appeal from Lambda Legal, the Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) of the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services has revised its regulations concerning licensing prospective foster parents to remove a requirement that foster parents be free of a list of communicable diseases that included HIV.