The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed towards the state of Tennessee in Memphis final week on behalf of 4 people who’ve been convicted of Aggravated Prostitution and required to register as “violent intercourse offenders” for his or her complete lives. The ACLU additionally filed on behalf of OUTMemphis, the state’s oldest and largest service supplier to LGBTQ+ Tennesseans.
Tennessee is the one state within the nation that requires individuals dwelling with HIV who’ve been convicted of prostitution to register as “violent intercourse offenders” for his or her complete lives.
The ACLU challenges the Aggravated Prostitution regulation and lifelong intercourse offender registration requirement on the grounds that they violate the Individuals with Disabilities Act by concentrating on individuals dwelling with HIV, a protected incapacity, for harsher punishment than others who are usually not HIV-positive. The lawsuit additionally challenges the regulation and intercourse offender requirement beneath the Equal Safety Clause of the 14th Modification, and the eighth Modification’s prohibition towards merciless and weird punishment.
The Aggravated Prostitution regulation was handed in 1991 at a time of nationwide panic over HIV. Beginning in 1994 with the adoption of a Intercourse Offender Registry, these convicted of Aggravated Prostitution should register as a intercourse offender for 10 years. In 2010, an Aggravated Prostitution conviction turned categorized as a “violent sexual offense” and required lifetime registration as a intercourse offender.
The regulation targets individuals engaged in intercourse work, who usually are additionally Black cisgender and transgender girls engaged in “survival intercourse” – the follow of people who find themselves unhoused or in any other case deprived buying and selling intercourse for meals, shelter, medicine, or cash to satisfy their fundamental wants. 83 individuals had been on the Tennessee intercourse offender registry for Aggravated Prostitution, and practically all of them had been arrested due to interactions with undercover law enforcement officials who solicited them in sting operations.
Molly Quinn, govt director of OUTMepmphis, stated that the regulation “solely targets individuals due to their HIV standing and retains them in cycles of poverty, whereas posing completely zero profit to public well being and security.” Individuals convicted of Aggravated Prostitution spend years in jail and register as violent intercourse offenders for the remainder of their lives, which ends up in lack of entry to housing, employment, healthcare, and neighborhood life.
Tennessee isn’t the one state to criminalize individuals dwelling with HIV, as a complete of 25 nonetheless have these fear-driven legal guidelines from when HIV first emerged within the Eighties. Tennessee has no comparable regulation for some other infectious illness, even these which can be extra prevalent and transmissible than HIV.
In submitting paperwork, the ACLU famous that:
“The Aggravated Prostitution statute doesn’t require for any inquiry in to the underlying details and circumstances in a person case. As an example, the statue doesn’t enable for consideration of the alleged sexual exercise at difficulty; the diploma of threat of HIV transmission concerned (if any); whether or not preventative measures equivalent to a condom, PrEP, or PEP had been used; the shopper’s HIV standing; whether or not the accused particular person has a suppressed viral load; nor whether or not their HIV standing has been disclosed.”
HIV criminalization is not going to scale back HIV transmission. The plaintiffs are asking the courtroom to strike down the Aggravated Prostitution statute and the ensuing lifetime intercourse offender registration requirement as clearly discriminatory as a result of they unlawfully punish individuals on the idea of a protected incapacity.
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