Indiana Town Fired Man, Revoked Job Offer After Finding Out That He Has HIV: Lawsuit

A local police department allegedly fired a man from his employment and rescined his job offer after learning that he has HIV, a lawsuit alleged.

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the southern Indiana town of Clarksville on Monday for discriminating against the man based on HIV status. The unidentified man who was working as a reserve officer with the department for over a year was offered a conditional offer of employment as a police officer in October 2015, Charlotte Observer reported.

He was asked to undergo a state-mandated medical examination. When the man appeared for the medical test, he told the examiner that he had HIV and was taking antiviral medications prescribed by his doctors.

Although the man told that there was "no long-term evidence of active disease," and his condition was well controlled with medication, the examiner reportedly told him that he did not meet the statewide medical standards.

The official reportedly told him that "HIV was a "communicable disease" that posed a significant risk of substantial harm to the health and safety of his colleagues and the public." However, the official could not provide any evidence to support the argument, court records said.

In November 2015, the Clarksville police chief recommended withdrawing the man’s job offer and to fire him from his role as a reserve police officer.

The man then had to spend the next 15 months appealing his disqualification. After around eight months into the efforts, the police department added him back onto its police officer hiring list, but he was never rehired. The man eventually accepted an offer from a different police department.

However, the incidents delayed the start of the man's career as a police officer and affected him financially, the lawsuit said. The experience has also caused "significant emotional distress, including humiliation, depression and anxiety."

"No qualified individual should lose a hard-earned career opportunity because of misguided views about their disability that are not supported by medicine or science. The scientific community has agreed for years that an HIV diagnosis does not make an employee risk to their colleagues or others," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in the news release.

The Department of Justice has requested the city to "bring its employment practices into compliance with Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act" and to reinstate the man as a police officer with his seniority and benefits provided from the time the offer was withdrawn.