Earlier this week, PBS aired the documentary Perpetuating Stigma about the ongoing criminalization of women with HIV. Through the stories of several women impacted by HIV criminalization — the use of criminal law to target people diagnosed with HIV for prosecutions and imprisonment — the documentary movingly illustrates how such laws dehumanize and stigmatize women living with HIV. But because of the opposition of the Alabama Department of Corrections, the producers of “Perpetuating Stigma” never got to tell the story of Dana Harley.
For 25 years, the ACLU has been a forceful advocate to end discrimination against prisoners living with HIV. We've worked to end their segregation from the rest of the prison population and ensure they are afforded access to vital services and programs.
The scourge of modern slavery, including human trafficking, continues to tear at our common humanity and to rip the social fabric of communities around the world.
The international community must redouble its efforts to combat modern slavery and human trafficking by fully implementing existing trafficking laws and prosecuting its perpetrators.
We couldn't agree more, which is why the ACLU is battling human trafficking in the United States on a few different fronts.
You can’t tell by looking at someone whether he or she is living with HIV. That is, unless you catch a glimpse of a man who’s living with HIV in the state of Alabama’s prison system.
There are over 200 male prisoners living with HIV in Alabama. The Alabama Department of Corrections requires each of them to wear a white armband at all times, making their health status obvious to other inmates, prison staff, and visitors. The practice is a huge affront to prisoners’ privacy and confidentiality, and it’s one of several forms of discrimination against prisoners living with HIV that we’re fighting to stop in the Henderson v. Thomascase, currently on trial in federal court in Montgomery. As we’ve said before, public health authorities have been explaining since the 1980s that routine physical contact does not transmit HIV.
Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history.
On September 9, 1971, in response to brutal living conditions and oppressive policies, prisoners rose up and took control of New York's Attica prison. The prisoners held more than 30 prison staff hostage, taking care to protect them from additional harm, while prisoner representatives sought to negotiate with state leaders. They protested the horrific conditions in which the prisoners were forced to live. They protested the lack of educational programs and basic medical care. And they demanded change.
Yesterday, organizations combating HIV/AIDS received support to continue and strengthen their work with one of the populations most vulnerable to infection. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the "anti-prostitution pledge," a part of the U.S. Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act. The law required nongovernmental organizations receiving U.S. funding for HIV/AIDS work to declare — or pledge — that they opposed prostitution. Most alarmingly, the pledge extended to all parts of an organization's work, even parts that didn't use U.S. money.
I'm going to do things a little backwards here... Ordinarily, I would give you what is called a time served sentence, and...your time in prison would effectively end today....[However] I'm inclined to keep you in jail, given your medical condition and the medical condition for your child, to prevent your child from being born HIV positive. And my inclination is to sentence you until September 15, which is a time after your due date, so that you can continue to receive the necessary medicine up to the time of your delivery.
— The Honorable John A. Woodcock, Jr., District Court of Maine, May 14, 2009
Alabama segregates all prisoners with HIV, and houses them separately from all other prisoners – it’s an HIV ghetto. As soon as you walk into Limestone Correctional Facility, the prison where Alabama houses all male prisoners with HIV, you know who has the virus: they are forced to wear a white armband day and night.
The National LGBT Bar Association recently announced the recipients of its inaugural Best LGBT Lawyers under 40 Award, and we're happy to note that two ACLU attorneys are among that select group. Christine Sun, senior counsel for the ACLU LGBT & AIDS Project since 2005, has many gay rights accomplishments under her belt in her short career. She was lead attorney in Nguon v. Wolf, the Southern California case that led to the federal court ruling that a high school student cannot be "outed" to her parents without her consent. Christine was also counsel on Chandler v. Barker which recently struck down a Tennessee family court practice in divorce cases of prohibiting the same-sex partner of a parent from staying the night when the children are present in their home. Most recently, Christine represented Constance McMillen in her successful litigation against the rural Mississippi school district that refused to let her bring her girlfriend to the prom and then cancelled the prom when told they had to.
