“If the promise of equal opportunity contained in the Americans with Disabilities Act is to be fulfilled, employers’ misconceptions and outdated policies need to be challenged,” he added.
The plaintiff is a Georgia man who applied to be an Atlanta Police officer in 2006. According to Lambda Legal, during a pre-employment medical exam the APD learned Roe is HIV-positive and he was told by the doctor that examined him that his status disqualified him from being an Atlanta Police officer.
When Roe was not hired, he filed suit in the U.S. District Court for Northern Georgia against the city of Atlanta, accusing the city of “discrimination based on federal and state law as well as for violating the American with Disabilities Act and the federal Rehabilitation Act.”
According to Lambda Legal, the city of Atlanta argued during litigation that it did not consider HIV a reason to not hire someone as a police officer and that the city had no policy against hiring people with HIV.
On summary judgment, however, the city argued Roe “could not show he was qualified to perform the job because it believed that a police officer with HIV presents a ‘direct threat’ to the health and safety of others,” according to Lambda Legal.
The District Court then granted summary judgment in the city’s favor for not providing enough evidence to show he would not be a threat to the safety of others as a police officer, according to Lambda Legal.
“The City of Atlanta is talking out of both sides of its mouth. They claim that having HIV doesn’t prevent someone from becoming a police officer; then they walk into court and say that it does,” said Greg Nevins, Supervising Senior Staff Attorney at Lambda Legal’s Southern Regional Office in Atlanta, in a statement.
“It was unfair for the district court to allow the Atlanta Police Department to get away with this, especially when the available science supports our client,” Nevins added.
Lambda Legal filed an appeal in July 2011 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and is arguing that Roe “presented sufficient evidence to satisfy any burden he has to show that his HIV is not a threat to others and that the city should not have been permitted to say he is a ‘direct threat’ after taking the contrary position leading up to summary judgment,” states a Lambda Legal press release.