HIV

(NEW YORK, June 25, 1998) -- Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Whitman-Walker Clinic hailed Thursday's United States Supreme Court ruling that HIV disease is within the broad scope of the Americans with Disabilities Act protection from discrimination.

Lambda and Whitman-Walker are co-counsel for 16 major medical and public health associations and individual experts that are amici in the case, Bragdon v. Abbott. It was the first case ever heard by the Supreme Court concerning either AIDS or the ADA.

(LOS ANGELES, May 27, 1998) -- Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund is urging a California appeals court to rule against an insurance industry practice aimed at denying disability benefits to people with AIDS and other illnesses.

On Wednesday, May 27, at the California Court of Appeal in Los Angeles, Lambda will argue on behalf of Mark Galanty, who is appealing a trial court decision that upheld the Paul Revere Life Insurance Company's refusal to pay his AIDS-related disability claim.

(CHICAGO, May 6,1998) Refusing to address the medically unsupported claim that spit can transmit HIV, the Ohio Supreme Court Wednesday upheld a man's conviction on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon for spitting at a police officer, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund said.

Only one judge addressed the HIV issues raised in the case of Jimmy Bird, and he firmly rejected the notion that the spit of a person with HIV poses any danger to others. Bird is infected with the human immunodeficiency virus.

(NEW YORK, Monday, April 13, 1998) -- Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund lauded a New York State appeals court decision last Friday upholding the dismissal of a case brought by New England Mutual Life Insurance Company. The company sought to avoid payment of AIDS-related disability benefits to a long-time policy holder in Rockland County on the basis of his HIV-status at the time he purchased the policy.

(LOS ANGELES, April 10, 1998) -- A California appeals court Thursday affirmed the right of people who seek disability payments after losing a job to challenge the firing as discriminatory.

In Bell v. Wells Fargo Bank, the court ruled that Andrew Bell, an HIV-positive man who worked for Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco, could pursue an anti-discrimination lawsuit against his former employer even though he had applied for disability benefits.

(Washington, D.C., June 8, 2006) — Today, Lambda Legal delivered a petition signed by 5,000 people urging Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to repeal the federal government’s discriminatory hiring policies and allow a qualified man living with HIV to work as a Foreign Service Officer.

(NEW YORK, Tuesday, March 17, 1998) -- Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, on behalf of a host of major medical and public health associations, urges the United States Supreme Court to rule that the Americans with Disabilities Act protects people with HIV.

The Supreme Court will hear argument about its first AIDS-related discrimination case, Randon Bragdon, DMD v. Sidney Abbott, et al, on Monday, March 30. Lambda attorneys, Catherine Hanssens and Heather Sawyer, will be available for questions after the hearing.

(LOS ANGELES, February 23, 1998) -- Argument in California appeals court will take place Tuesday, February 24, in a case that challenges a ruling that a person who seeks disability payments after losing his job may not contest the firing as discriminatory.

Lambda is asserting that the law is not meant to force those with HIV into a "Catch-22" of having to forego disability benefits to which they are entitled in order to be allowed to fight to get back their jobs.

(CHICAGO, February 17, 1998) The Ohio Supreme Court Wednesday, February 18, will hear the appeal of Jimmy Bird, an HIV-positive man who has spent nearly three years in prison for spitting during an arrest, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund said Tuesday.

Bird was sentenced to three-to-15 years in prison for assault with a "deadly weapon" for allegedly spitting at a police officer during an arrest for disorderly conduct.