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Dealing with HIV/AIDS in the Workplace
Fall 2003
By Peter Petesch
Peter Petesch is a partner with Ford & Harrison's Washington, DC, office and a former co-chair of the Business/Labor Responds to AIDS National Partners Board, Mr. Petesch writes extensively on the Americans with Disabilities Act.
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Although education, promising treatments, and the passage of time have helped minimize the panic of the 1980s, HIV/AIDS remains a very serious issue for businesses and the economy at large, undeserving of this new era of complacency. With the number of new HIV infections and AIDS cases on the rise again, and with new public health initiatives encouraging more people to know their status, more and more employers will be faced with workers and members of worker's families confronting HIV/AIDS.
Every large business has been or will be affected, and most small businesses will follow suit. Better medical therapies prolonging the survival of HIV patients (and increasing their productive lives in some cases) also force greater emphasis on day-to-day management of employees with HIV/AIDS and their co-workers. The complexity of managing HIV stems from the evolving nature of how HIV affects the infected individual, as well as the unpredictable manner in which it affects others in the organization. From a legal perspective alone, employers must continue to take proactive measures in the context of their general non-discrimination and diversity programs to address this increasingly pervasive issue.
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) cases involving HIV/AIDS continue to be litigated and employers encounter daily personnel decisions fraught with legal repercussions in managing employees with HIV/AIDS. Cases implicate the three main pillars of the ADA: non-discrimination, reasonable accommodations, and confidentiality of medical information. The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Bragdon v. Abbott concluded that one individual's asymptomatic HIV is a disability under the ADA.
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