Local News in Brief : Partial Win in AIDS Suit

A federal judge in Los Angeles has given a partial victory to a man who filed suit after he was excluded from Centinela Hospital’s drug and alcohol rehabilitation program because he tested positive for the AIDS virus.

The unidentified man claims the exclusion in January, 1987, violated a federal law barring discrimination against the handicapped. U.S. District Judge Pamela A. Rymer has not yet ruled whether that law was violated. But in a 25-page decision, she made a preliminary finding that the man, referred to as “John Doe” in court papers, was perceived by Centinela Hospital as having a handicap when he was barred from its LifeStarts rehabilitation program.

John Doe’s attorney, Paul Hoffman, legal director of the Southern California American Civil Liberties Union, said the decision could expand the legal protection afforded to AIDS carriers by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which bars discrimination against the handicapped. Rymer’s ruling is believed to be the first to include in the category of “perceived handicap” someone who tested positive for the AIDS virus but who has not become ill with it, Hoffman said.

Centinela attorneys have argued that their blanket policy of barring AIDS-positive people from the rehabilitation program was justified because of the threat of transmission to other patients.