Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia, Inc.; Friday June 26 2:00 AM EDT
James Vicini

The 5-4 decision was the high court's first AIDS-related ruling and was only the second time it decided a case involving the eight-year-old federal civil rights law that bars disability discrimination.

The case involved a a Maine dentist who had been sued for discrimination because he told a patient with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that he would fill her cavity in a hospital, but not in his office.

President Clinton hailed the ruling Thursday, saying: "This decision reinforces the protections offered by the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act for Americans living with HIV and AIDS," he said in a statement.

The ruling was a victory for the Justice Department, which has included people with HIV under the scope of the disability law. About one million Americans have the AIDS virus.

The high court, in a 29-page opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, said the patient's HIV infection was a disability covered by the law, even though she had no symptoms of the disease.

"From the moment of infection and throughout every stage of disease, HIV infection satisfies the statutory and regulatory definition of a physical impairment," he said.

Kennedy said the patient, Sidney Abbott, who has been infected with HIV since 1986, was disabled because she was substantially limited in the "major life activity" of reproduction because of her disease.

Kennedy told a federal appeals court to reconsider whether the evidence in the record was sufficient to determine that Abbott's infection posed no direct threat to the health and safety of her dentist.

Abbott in 1994 went to Dr. Randon Bragdon's office in Bangor, Maine for a regular appointment. Abbott, who had no AIDS symptoms, said on her patient registration form that she was infected with HIV.

The dentist performed an exam and discovered a cavity. He told her that under his infectious disease policy, he would not fill her cavity in his office, but would treat her only in a hospital.

Although he would charge her his regular fee, she would have to pay the additional cost of whatever the hospital charged for use of its facilities. She sued the dentist, as an operator of a place of public accommodation, for discrimination because of her disease.

Bragdon, a dentist for 20 years, argued that treating Abbott in his office would pose a direct threat to his health and safety.

Abbott's attorney replied that the federal Centers for Disease Control had yet to find a proven case of a dentist getting AIDS from a patient in the more than 15 years since the disease was first reported.

The American Medical Association has sided with Abbott, saying there was no "significant" risk that the HIV virus can be transferred from patient to doctor or dentist. But the American Dental Association supported Bragdon, saying people with HIV should not be considered disabled.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Sandra Day O'Connor dissented. Rehnquist said Abbott had not proven that her condition had substantially limited one of her "major life activities." In New York, Beatrice Dohrn of the gay rights group the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, welcomed the ruling, saying: "HIV is the quintessential disability that the ADA was meant to cover."

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