The U.S. Department of State has changed its policy prohibiting the hiring of persons who are HIV-positive. The decision ends a five-year legal challenge to that policy, which was headed for arguments in a federal courtroom later this month.
The Feb. 15 announcement came while President George W. Bush was flying to Africa on a tour that would highlight the U.S. response to AIDS on that continent.
The decision lifts the blanket ban on hiring persons who are HIV-positive to serve as diplomats. The department will now hire and assign current and future employees worldwide on a case-by-case basis based on their overall health status.
The lawsuit was brought by Lorenzo Taylor, now 51, a graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He is fluent in three languages and had passed all of the hurdles to join the State Department when, in 2001, a medical review dashed his plans to become a diplomat.
State Department regulations at the time said that new employees must be available for worldwide service and that being HIV-positive was an automatic exclusion. However, current employees who seroconverted were allowed to continue to work so long as their health allowed.
Taylor, with the assistance of Lambda Legal, sought reasonable accommodations from the department. They argued that the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy ( HAART ) had changed the medical situation and the employment policy should change to reflect that.
They tried administrative channels but those proved futile and they filed suit in federal court in 2002, charging a violation of The Rehabilitation Act.
The department threw up every procedural challenge possible to avoid having to face the substance of the issue, but it lost in court at every turn. It finally threw in the towel as the trial date approached, and changed its medical guidelines.
'We are extremely pleased with this change,' said Bebe J. Anderson, HIV project director at Lambda Legal. 'The new guidelines mean that candidates for Foreign Service posts who have HIV will now be assessed on a case-by-case basis, as the law requires. At long last, the State Department is taking down its sign that read 'People with HIV need not apply.''
Taylor agreed to a settlement of his lawsuit that was not conditional upon his employment. He had moved to San Francisco the first of this year in a new position within his old agency at the Department of Health and Human Services.
In personal correspondence he said, 'I'm happy that State has finally done the right thing, but I only wish that bringing them to this point had not taken so long and so much effort. With a little courage, this could have been resolved years ago instead of on the eve of the trial.
'My joy is tempered by my sadness for all the foreign service officer candidates through the years whose talents and service have been overlooked because of their HIV status and who were also victims of this archaic policy.'
