Trump Administration’s Attempt To Discharge HIV-Positive Airmen Has Been Blocked For The Second Time
An appeal against the Trump administration’s attempt to discharge two Air Force members who are HIV-positive has been upheld by a federal appeals court for the second time.
The two airmen, who have remained unnamed and are referred to by the pseudonyms Victor Voe and Richard Roe, were discharged because their HIV-positive status didn’t allow them to be deployed to the Middle East. The U.S Central Command prohibits personnel with HIV from deploying without a waiver.
According to the ‘Advocate’, “both men are on antiretroviral treatment, have no symptoms and have been pronounced physically fit to reply by their doctors.”
The two men sued arguing that there is no rational basis for prohibiting deployment of service members with HIV and that with the right treatments they would not present a real risk of transmission to others.
In February last year, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issued a preliminary injunction against the discharge of the two airmen while their case proceeds to trial. The Department of defense and the Air Force appealed, but the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the injunction.
“A ban on deployment may have been justified at a time when HIV treatment was less effective at managing the virus and reducing transmission risks,” Judge James A. Wynn Jr. wrote for a three-judge panel of the court. “But any understanding of HIV that could justify this ban is outmoded and at odds with current science. Such obsolete understandings cannot justify a ban, even under a deferential standard of review and even according appropriate deference to the military’s professional judgments.
“These service members, like other HIV-positive individuals with undetectable viral loads, have no symptoms of HIV,” the ruling concluded. “They take daily medication — usually one pill, for some people two — and need a regular, but routine blood test. They cannot transmit the virus through normal daily activities, and their risk of transmitting the virus through battlefield exposure, if the virus can be transmitted at all, is extremely low. Although transmission through blood transfusion is possible, these service members have been ordered not to donate blood. But the Government did not consider these realities when discharging these service members, instead relying on assumptions and categorical determinations. As a result, the Air Force denied these service members an individualized determination of their fitness for military service.”
Scott Schoettes, counsel and HIV Project director at Lambda Legal, said that “this is the second federal court to find that the Trump administration’s attempt to discharge these individuals is unlikely to pass legal muster.
“At the root of these discharge decisions and other restrictions on the service of people living with HIV are completely outdated and bigoted ideas about HIV. Today’s ruling clears the way for us to definitively prove at trial that a person living with HIV can perform the job of soldier or airman as well and as safely as anyone else. We are confident Roe and Voe will succeed because the government is unable to offer a reasonable justification for their discriminatory treatment.”
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