Dentist Loses HIV Court Battle
The Supreme Court Monday rejected the appeal of a Maine dentist who was sued after he refused to treat a woman infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
The justices, without comment, turned away Randon Bragdon's contention that filling a cavity in Sidney Abbott's tooth at his office would have posed a "direct threat" to his health and safety.
Lower courts had rejected that claim when they ruled for Abbott without even holding a trial on her claims of discrimination.
Bragdon had urged the nation's highest court to use the case to clarify when disabled people can be treated differently under a federal anti-bias law, the Americans with Disabilities Act. The act protects the disabled against discrimination in jobs, housing and public accommodations.
The same Maine dispute was the subject of a key Supreme Court decision just last June, when the justices said people infected with HIV can sue under the 1990 law.
That decision was the court's first ever involving the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. Gay rights activists hailed the ruling.
In returning the Maine case to a federal appeals court, the justices said then that a health care provider's actions should be judged according to "the objective reasonableness of the views of health care professionals without deferring to their individual judgments."
Public health authorities say there is no documented case of a dentist contracting the AIDS virus from a patient. But Bragdon contended he should be allowed to use his own judgment on how to safely treat such patients. He had offered to fill Abbott's cavity at a hospital near his office, but the procedure would have cost more there.
When the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals restudied the case, it ruled in December that Abbott's legal victory in the discrimination case should stand and that no trial was necessary. She had won a judgment saying Bragdon should stop discriminating, but received no monetary award.
The appeals court portrayed Bragdon's offered evidence of health risks as "too speculative or too tangential, or in some instances both, to create a genuine issue of material fact."
In the appeal acted on Monday, Bragdon said the 1st Circuit court's ruling "encourages health care workers to practice below-minimum safety standards."
A call to Bragdon was not immediately returned, but his attorney said the dentist believes that the stance he has taken is the right one and that the court will address the issue again in some future case. "He is totally committed to this issue," lawyer John W. McCarthy said. "He intends to try to advance his position in whatever way he thinks is appropriate."
Abbott's attorney hailed the latest action as "the final chapter in a long history of litigation in which every court has taken the view that there is no basis, medical or otherwise, to refuse health services to people with AIDS."
"We celebrate today's decision ecause it is the end of a long road which has resulted in the establishment of important civil rights for people with HIV," said Bennett Klein of the Boston-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders.
Written By Richard Carelli