Los Angeles outlaws A.I.D.S. discrimination

Press, 16 August 1985, Page 6

Los Angeles outlaws A.I.D.S. discrimination

NZPA-AP Los Angeles The Los Angeles City Council approved unanimously yesterday a bill providing penalties of up to six months imprisonment for people who discriminate against A.I.D.S. victims. The bill, one of the first of its kind in the United States and expected to be signed into law quickly by the Mayor, Mr Tom Bradley, provides penalties for employers who dismiss, refuse to employ, or segregate people with A.I.D.S. The measure also applies to landlords who refuse to rent a home to someone with A.I.D.S. or try to evict an A.I.D.S. patient. Medical authorities will be liable to go to prison if they refuse health, dental or convalescent care to anyone with acquired immune deficiency syndrome or anyone thought to have the disease. California state medical research experts have predicted that the number of A.I.D.S. cases in the United States will reach 70,000 within two years, 14,000 of them in California. High-risk groups for the often-fatal disease include male homosexuals, drug abusers, and haemophiliacs. The bill, which contains

an escape clause saying that its measures would not apply if public health or safety was endangered, provides for fines of up to SUSIOOO (51870), as well as jail sentences. The head of the city’s communicable disease control unit, Dr Shirley Fannin, assured councillors that the disease could not be transmitted by casual contact among the city’s three million inhabitants. “If we want to be a civilised society, we must act like a civilised society,” said a councillor, Marvin Braude.

The bill was passed by 14 votes to nil.

Another councillor, Zev Yaroslavsky, said that his office had received threatening telephone calls over his support for the measure. “I just wish the people who call would leave their telephone numbers,” he said. The bill’s sponsor, Joel Wachs, said, “People facing the most serious crisis of their lives are finding a society that is treating them like lepers.”

A similar measure is pending in nearby West Hollywood, the first American city to have a council with a homosexual majority.