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A lawsuit challenging Alabama’s
policy of segregating HIV-positive inmates will proceed to trial this month,
thanks to an order issued Wednesday by a federal judge.
In rejecting the state prison
system’s request that the suit be dismissed, US District Judge Myron Thompson
cleared it for a non-jury trial set to start on Sept. 17 in Montgomery.
The judge wrote in his order that
Alabama had been segregating HIV-positive prisoners since the 1980s, as many
other states also were doing at the time. By 1994, however, only six states
continued the practice, and now only Alabama and South Carolina do so. A total
of 260 HIV-positive inmates are currently held at four Alabama correctional
institutions.
Kim Thomas, the state’s prison
commissioner, said Alabama won a similar case in 1999 and is prepared for trial
on this one.
Thompson rejected the state’s claim
that it is immune from suit and that inmates are not entitled to medical
privacy. However, he did not rule on the question of whether the current suit
is too much like one filed in 1997, which the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals
decided in Alabama’s favor in 1999. Instead, he said he would determine at the
end of the trial whether this case was too similar to the earlier one to
proceed.
Attorneys for the eight inmates who
filed the current suit maintain that conditions today are much different than
when the earlier case was settled. They cited medical advances and changing
attitudes about HIV, arguing that AIDS is no longer an “invariably fatal
disease,” as the appeals court declared 13 years ago.
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is
dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and
empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV
virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!
