NCJ Number
116521
Date Published
1987
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article reviews the legal analysis underlying the Justice Department's 1986 opinion regarding the applicability of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to persons who have AIDS or who carry the AIDS virus.
Abstract
Section 504 prohibits recipients of Federal funds from discriminating against otherwise qualified handicapped individuals solely by reason of their handicaps. Because resisting disease is thought to be a major life activity, AIDS victims are handicapped from the moment they have AIDS. Persons who are infected with the virus but who have no symptoms of the disease are not handicapped and do not fall within the protection of Section 504. Thus, an asymptomatic carrier of the AIDS virus who is excluded from a federally funded workplace because of an employer's fear that he will spread the AIDS virus by casual contact cannot even get into court to argue that this fear is irrational. Neither does Section 504 reach such claims by persons who are physically impaired by AIDS and excluded from a federally funded program because of fear of contagion. Thus, contagion-based discrimination, whether rational or irrational is, in the Justice Department's view, not the type of conduct that Section 504 addresses.