HIV Infection and the Americans with Disabilities Act: An Evolving Interaction

Architects of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) contemplated that people living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and AIDS would attract the act's antidiscrimination protections. Courts have recognized both conditions as covered disabilities. The extent to which the ADA introduces protection against insurers and health care providers who single out AIDS and HIV-related diseases for special treatment is not clear, however. Factors such as the increasing penetration of managed care, existing regimes of insurance regulation, and ambiguities in the act itself accentuate this lack of clarity. Efforts to define better the ADA's role in governing health benefits determinations and the obligations of hospitals and health care professionals can be expected to intensify. Also unclear, and likely to be borne out by successive interpretations, is whether the ADA will be used for judicial review of state action aimed at protecting the public's health from infectious diseases associated with the AIDS epidemic.