The Biden administration’s Justice Department filed a lawsuit Thursday against Tennessee’s aggravated prostitution law for people with HIV.
The law, which imposes tougher penalties for engaging in prostitution while knowingly infected with HIV, violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Justice Department claims in its lawsuit.
The department said Tennessee’s law elevates the crime simply “because the individual has HIV, regardless of any actual risk of harm.”
“People living with HIV should not be subjected to a different system of justice based on outdated science and misguided assumptions,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s civil rights division said in a statement.
Tennessee’s law, passed in 1991, raises prostitution from a misdemeanor to a felony “when, knowing that such person is infected with HIV, the person engages in…
