AMA Challenges Justice Dept. Approval of Firing AIDS Victims

The American Medical Assn. said Friday that some communicable diseases do not pose a medical hazard in the workplace and that people with those illnesses should be protected under laws barring discrimination against the handicapped in federally funded programs.

The AMA, filing a “friend of the court” brief in a Florida case scheduled to come before the Supreme Court in the fall, challenged a Justice Department ruling last month that said employers who fire people with AIDS based on fear of contagion do not violate the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

B. J. Anderson, AMA associate general counsel, said the brief calls for an examination of employment situations dealing with communicable diseases on a case-by-case basis to avoid committing blanket “impermissible” discrimination.

Anderson said the medical association maintains that acquired immune deficiency syndrome is “not transmissible by casual contact.”

Fires Schoolteacher

The Justice Department issued its memorandum in response to a case that will be decided by the Supreme Court next term in which a Florida school board fired an elementary schoolteacher who had tuberculosis because it feared the spread of the disease. Although the case does not directly involve AIDS, the department used it as a precedent for its ruling on whether such terminations violate the Rehabilitation Act.

The Justice Department ruling is “a blanket statement” that has prompted such measures as local and state legislation barring schoolchildren with AIDS from attending school, Anderson said773857826communicable diseases) and exclude them creates severe problems in the United States.”

The AMA, in its brief, recommended that the Supreme Court review the medical facts of a disease to determine whether its carriers present a medical hazard before ruling whether it is discriminatory to fire such employees.