New Los Angeles Ordinance : Few Seek Help of AIDS Bias Law

In its first week of operation, Los Angeles’ ordinance banning discrimination against AIDS victims has drawn national attention as well as local public furor, but little response from those it is meant to protect.

Of more than 100 calls a day to the city’s AIDS hot line, only a few have come from AIDS victims seeking help under the ordinance. A few more complaints have been called into the city’s Rent Stabilization Program, which deals with housing discrimination claims, and to the city attorney’s office. That office is charged with enforcing the sweeping provisions of the new law that prohibits employers, landlords, schools, businesses and medical facilities from discriminating against individuals who have contracted acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

No private lawsuits have yet surfaced under provisions of the ordinance that allow individuals, as well as the city attorney’s office, to file civil suits for damages against those who break the new law.

“We don’t anticipate a huge program” for enforcing the ordinance, said Heather Dalmont, an aide to Councilman Joel Wachs, noting that of the 1,200 reported cases of AIDS in the county, about half of the victims have died, leaving only about 600 potential claimants.

“But if you’re dying of AIDS and you’re thrown out of your house . . . the mechanism is in place to take care of that,” she said.

Amendments to the new law, proposed by Mayor Tom Bradley when he signed the ordinance into law, would limit legal action to the city attorney’s office, as well as seek consistency with state laws. The proposals, referred to the council’s Public Health Committee, are expected to be on hold for at least a month, when Councilman Ernarni Bernardi, the committee’s chairman, is scheduled to return from vacation.

The mayor has emphasized that the new law is not meant to punish but to educate the public about the incurable disease which medical experts say is transmitted through sexual activity or the exchange of blood. In a letter to the City Council, Bradley objected to allowing enforcement through private legal action because this “might generate costly lawsuits against individuals who are acting out of good faith--if mistaken--belief about the causes of AIDS,” he said. Unlike the private suits, the city attorney’s office would seek to halt the discriminatory action rather than to provide monetary relief or compensation.

Wachs opposes the amendments, which he views as weakening the ordinance he originally drafted, Dalmont said. She noted that all other discrimination laws in the city allow for individual legal action.

Referring to Bradley’s proposal to determine whether state law preempts the city’s jurisdiction in these discrimination cases, Dalmont argued that the city ordinance merely provides “another means by which an AIDS patient who is a victim of discrimination can seek relief.”