Opinion
The Justice Division has filed a lawsuit in opposition to the state of Tennessee over its aggravated prostitution regulation, claiming that it violates the People with Disabilities Act.
The regulation, handed in 1991, imposes harsher prison penalties on prostitutes who have interaction of their line of labor whereas knowingly contaminated with HIV.
The aggravated prostitution regulation raises the aforementioned act from a misdemeanor to a felony “when, knowing that such person is infected with HIV, the person engages in sexual activity as a business or is an inmate in a house of prostitution or loiters in a public place for the purpose of being hired to engage in sexual activity.”
It additionally requires the responsible celebration to register for all times as a “violent sex offender,” and so they may withstand 15 years in jail and a effective of as much as $10,000.
The DOJ’s lawsuit contends that the regulation violates the People with Disabilities Act.
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DOJ Suing Over Tennessee Aggravated Prostitution Legislation
Going after the Tennessee aggravated prostitution regulation from a incapacity angle is actually fascinating.
“The enforcement of state criminal laws that treat people differently based on HIV status alone and that are not based on actual risks of harm, discriminate against people living with HIV,” stated Assistant Legal professional Basic Kristen Clarke of the Justice Division’s Civil Rights Division.
“People living with HIV should not be subjected to a different system of justice based on outdated science and misguided assumptions,” Clarke added. “This lawsuit reflects the Justice Department’s commitment to ensuring that people living with HIV are not targeted because of their disability.”
They’re not being focused due to their incapacity: they’re being focused for an already prison act that occurs to be heinous in that it has the potential to alter the lifetime of the opposite celebration engaged in such prison acts.
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The Distinction With This ‘Disability’
In the US, HIV is thought of a incapacity beneath the People with Disabilities Act (ADA). That stated, not all disabilities are the identical. You possibly can’t transmit being blind to a co-worker. Nor are you able to transmit listening to loss or autism.
What you may transmit is HIV, which, whereas nice strides have been made within the medical discipline on this illness, would nonetheless be a life-altering analysis.
The DOJ lawsuit in opposition to the Tennessee aggravated prostitution regulation comes after the division discovered that the regulation was discriminatory in December, however the state declined to enter into negotiations.
This isn’t the primary time that the regulation has been challenged, as a number of organizations filed a federal lawsuit in Memphis final yr on behalf of 4 “Jane Doe” plaintiffs and OutMemphis, a neighborhood nonprofit that serves the LGBT neighborhood.
The ACLU argued that the regulation disproportionately impacts black and transgender prostitutes who knowingly have interaction in sexual acts for pay whereas being HIV+.
The DOJ lawsuit cites one explicit “victim” of the Tennessee prostitution regulation, a “black transgender woman” who was engaged in prostitution in 2010 regardless of knowingly being HIV constructive in 2008.
The complainant additionally occurred to be arrested, the Each day Wire experiences, for “prostitution near a church or school.”
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