FBI Illegally Fired Physician With AIDS, Court Finds

In a ruling that runs counter to the trend of legal opinions involving health care workers with AIDS, a federal appeals court has found that the FBI illegally fired a San Francisco physician who had AIDS.

The physician, who died in 1992, ran a clinic contracted to perform physical examinations on FBI agents. Remaining anonymous, he sued the government in 1988 after the FBI stopped using him because he refused to tell bureau officials whether he had AIDS.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision, filed Friday, marks the second time the San Francisco appeals court has ruled in the case. Previously, appeals judges sent the case back to a lower court for a non-jury trial.

This week the appeals panel reversed the lower court ruling favoring the FBI, finding that the bureau had violated the federal Rehabilitation Act and dropped the doctor solely because agents believed he had AIDS.

Rather than being concerned with whether the physician had AIDS, “the FBI’s concern under the act should have been to determine whether [he] posed a substantial risk of communicating the disease,” the three-judge panel wrote, with one dissent. The judges further cited the lower court finding that “if appropriate medical procedures are followed . . . the risk of transmission of infection from a doctor with AIDS to a patient in the course of a routine physical examination is remote.”

Matthew Coles, director of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the physician, said he believed the ruling was the first to favor a medical worker with AIDS or HIV, the AIDS virus.

After the physician’s death, his partner pursued the case, which will now return to the lower court for a determination of damages. U.S. Justice Department attorneys could not be reached for comment.