COURT RULINGS IN OTHER AIDS CASES

Some of the key court cases involving students who have been exposed to the AIDS virus and their attendance at public schools:

April 11, 1986: A temporary injunction sought by high school parents in Kokomo, Ind., to bar Ryan White, a 14-year-old victim of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, from class, was refused. The student, who had been kept at home, was ordered to attend school. County Circuit Judge Jack R. O’Neil ruled that “there was no evidence of a threat of irreparable harm to Ryan’s classmates that would justify the temporary injunction.” White contracted the disease in December, 1984, while undergoing treatment for hemophilia.

Nov. 18, 1986: A Los Angeles judge ordered school officials to readmit a 5-year-old boy with AIDS who was barred from his kindergarten class for biting another student. In a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler declared young Ryan Thomas of Atascadero, who contracted AIDS at birth, a “handicapped student” protected by the Federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which imposes sharp restrictions on attempts to segregate the handicapped. Stotler ruled that “overwhelming medical evidence is that bites cannot convey this particular awful, tragic disease.”

Feb. 4, 1987: Channon Phipps, 12, an Orange County hemophiliac whose blood contains AIDS antibodies but who has no symptoms of the disease, was ordered to be readmitted to classes at Rancho Canada Elementary School in El Toro. Deborha Phipps, the boy’s guardian, had sued Saddleback Valley Unified School District, alleging that Channon had been expelled and was being denied an adequate education.

Aug. 25, 1987: Under police guard, three brothers who carry the AIDS virus returned to their elementary school in Arcadia, Fla., for the first time in nearly a year after a federal judge in Tampa ordered the boys to be reinstated. Despite threats and a boycott by frightened parents, Richard Ray, 10, and brothers Robert, 9, and Randy, 8, attended classes with 337 other youngsters. The brothers, all hemophiliacs, were exposed to the virus through a plasma-based medication used to make their blood clot in case of injury.