Hospital Accused of AIDS Bias After Dismissing Patient

Attempting to clarify AIDS victims’ legal protection against discrimination, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit Tuesday on behalf of a man forced to leave a hospital drug treatment program when he tested positive for the deadly virus.

The lawsuit, filed for the 33-year-old man who had depended on the treatment program at Centinela Hospital to save his job, seeks a declaration from the courts that the Inglewood hospital violated state and federal law when it ordered him to undergo an AIDS blood test and then discharged him because of fears for the health of other patients.

The suit is one of the first in the nation seeking to expand on a Supreme Court decision in March that extended the protection of federal anti-discrimination law to victims of contagious diseases but left open the question of whether those who have merely been exposed to the AIDS virus should enjoy similar guarantees.

Millions Affected

Its outcome could affect not only hospital patients but an estimated 2 million federal employees, contractors and workers at facilities receiving government aid who have tested positive for the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome and who are subject to federal handicap discrimination laws.

“This case is important because it asks the court to rule, for the first time, that persons who test positively for the AIDS virus are protected under the 1973 Rehabilitation Act,” said Mickey Wheatley, one of a team of private attorneys handling the case in cooperation with the ACLU.

Centinela Hospital’s vice president for legal affairs, Eric Tuckman, said he had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on it.

“The hospital is surprised that if, in fact, such an action is contemplated, that no communication was made by the ACLU to appropriate hospital officials,” Tuckman added in a prepared statement.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on behalf of John Doe, an unidentified Los Angeles man who entered the hospital in January for treatment of a chronic alcohol and drug abuse problem that he said was threatening his job.

Assured About Test

The head nurse in the unit told him a blood test for AIDS was required because patients live in such close proximity, eating in the same kitchen and swimming in the same pool. When he resisted, insisting that he was emotionally unprepared for the results, the nurse assured him that the test would not jeopardize his ability to remain at the hospital, he said.

The man said that when the test showed he had been exposed to the AIDS virus--although he had no symptoms of the disease--he was called into Dr. Fredrick Schlaff’s office and told that he would have to leave.

“I don’t know what you should do, but this hospital can’t have you as a patient here,” Schlaff told him, according to the suit.

“I felt like committing suicide, really,” the man said at a news conference Tuesday. “I felt like I had been thrown out into the street because I had a disease. I felt like everybody thought that if you swim with me or eat from the same plate that I eat off of or drink out of the same glass that I drink out of, you can catch the disease.”

ACLU attorneys noted that there is no medical evidence that AIDS can be transmitted by such casual contact.

“What rational reason, what medical, scientific basis was there for asking this person to leave this program? There was none . . . and the hospital should have known that,” said attorney Leroy S. Walker. “The reasons put forth by the hospital are absurd, and they’re cruel.”

ACLU attorneys say the hospital, by “coercing” the man into taking the blood test, clearly violated state law prohibiting AIDS testing against a person’s will.

Also at issue is whether federal anti-discrimination laws for the handicapped apply to those who have tested positive for the AIDS virus.

In its March 3 decision extending such protections in the case of a Florida teacher fired because she had tuberculosis, the U.S. Supreme Court indicated that the ruling applies to all people handicapped by contagious disease.

Question Left Open

The court specifically left open the question of whether those simply exposed to the AIDS virus, though not suffering from the disease, are entitled to similar protection.

About 20% to 30% of those exposed to AIDS contract the disease, yet without specific legal protections, hundreds of thousands of employees who have tested positive for AIDS could be fired, and millions more could be subject to AIDS testing demanded by their employers, ACLU lawyers said.

“If you use the hospital’s reasoning, 230 million people are going to have to be tested, whether they want to or not,” Walker said. “I think there are broad public policy issues here that have to be addressed.”