Source: South Florida Gay News, Published on March 25, 2019
HIV Modernization Bill Continues to Make Progress in Florida House
An HIV modernization bill, the (HB 79), cleared its second hurdle this week passing the Florida House’s Appropriations Committee overwhelmingly 26-3.
This is the second committee to give the bill a favorable recommendation. It recently passed the House’s Criminal Justice Subcommittee, 10-3.
“We’re really excited by the bipartisan momentum that we’ve seen for this HIV modernization legislation,” said Jon Harris Maurer, Equality Florida’s Public Policy Director. “This is long overdue and it’s exciting to see this being addressed as a criminal justice reform issue and a public health issue.”
Michael Rajner, an HIV rights activist, attributes the newfound support to advocates, stakeholders and people living with HIV meeting with lawmakers to tell their stories.
Rajner said he’s been working toward a bill like this for at least 8 years.
This is the third year this bill has been introduced and there’s been a surge in support. This is also the furthest an HIV modernization has gotten in the Florida Legislature.
“Regardless of which side of the aisle you sit on people want better public safety and better health outcomes and that’s what this bill does,” said Justin Klecha, Deputy Director of SAVE and a member of the Florida HIV Justice Coalition. “This is a fantastic bill that takes a huge step forward reducing stigma around HIV.”
Klecha said most of the opposition comes from a lack of knowledge.
“Legislators don’t know the current science around HIV, or how far we’ve come with the treatments,” Klecha said.
HB 79 must now pass through the Judiciary Committee. While in the Senate, Jason Pizzo (D – Miami), has filed similar legislation (SB 846), but no hearings have been scheduled as of yet.
“This is the first year the legislature is actually taking any actions and votes. We have a tremendous bill sponsor this year, Nick Duran out of Miami, who is incredibly passionate about this,” Rajner said. “We also owe a great deal of thanks to Dr. Hansel Tookes and the medical students at the University of Miami who have been doing a tremendous job of advocating for needle syringe exchange programs statewide and in that process have been educating legislators on HIV.”
The current law does not take into account whether a person actually transmitted HIV. Nor does it matter if a condom was used, or if the person with HIV is on treatment and undetectable.
This new bill would revise the existing law such as defining “Substantial risk of transmission” as “a reasonable probability of disease transmission as proven by competent medical or epidemiological evidence.” The bill would also update outdated language such as changing “sexual intercourse” to “sexual conduct.”
“I think the most profound change is that there would have to be actual intent and transmission of HIV to another individual during sex,” Rajner said.
Other changes include allowing a person who has HIV to donate blood, plasma, organs, skin, or other human tissue as long as a medical professional deems it appropriate. Currently, there are no exceptions so if someone did make such a donation they would be committing a third-degree felony. HB 79 would downgrade the penalty to a first-degree misdemeanor.
“This bill would help modernize Florida’s HIV laws that were written in the mid-80s at the height of the HIV epidemic and haven’t been updated to align with current science on treatment and prevention for HIV,” Maurer said. “I think most strikingly is that the law currently doesn’t account for whether in fact there is any transmission of HIV. So under the current law, a person could be incarcerated for up to 30 years with a third-degree felony, even though there is no transmission of HIV, and scientifically there is no risk of transmission.”
Source: South Florida Gay News, published on March 7, 2019
HIV Modernization Bill Moves Forward In Florida House
An HIV modernization bill, the HIV Prevention Justice Act (HB 79), cleared its first hurdle passing 10-3 in the Florida House’s Criminal Justice Subcommittee.
“We’re really excited by the bipartisan momentum that we’ve seen for this HIV modernization legislation,” said Jon Harris Maurer, Equality Florida’s Public Policy Director. “This is long overdue and it’s exciting to see this being addressed as a criminal justice reform issue and a public health issue.”
Five Republicans and five Democrats voted for the bill.
The current law does not take into account whether a person actually transmitted HIV. Nor does it matter if a condom was used, or if the person with HIV is on treatment and undetectable.
This new bill would revise the existing law such as defining “Substantial risk of transmission” as “a reasonable probability of disease transmission as proven by competent medical or epidemiological evidence.” The bill would also update outdated language such as changing “sexual intercourse” to “sexual conduct.”
Other changes include allowing a person who has HIV to donate blood, plasma, organs, skin, or other human tissue as long as a medical professional deems it appropriate. Currently, there are no exceptions so if someone did make such a donation they would be committing a third-degree felony. HB 79 would downgrade the penalty to a first-degree misdemeanor.
“This bill would help modernize Florida’s HIV laws that were written in the mid-80s at the height of the HIV epidemic and haven’t been updated to align with current science on treatment and prevention for HIV,” Maurer said. “I think most strikingly is that the law currently doesn’t account for whether in fact there is any transmission of HIV. So under the current law, a person could be incarcerated for up to 30 years with a third-degree felony, even though there is no transmission of HIV, and scientifically there is no risk of transmission.”
The bill must also pass through the Appropriations Committee and Judiciary Committee.
Senator Jason Pizzo (D – Miami) has filed similar legislation (SB 846) in the Florida Senate.
Nicholas Duran bill aims to modernize HIV law
Equality Florida applauds legislation catching law up to modern science.
Count it a leftover of the AIDS scare in the 1980s: Florida law treats those who knowingly transmit HIV different than any other sexually transmitted disease.
But a bill advancing through the Florida House could de-stigmatize HIV without decriminalizing irresponsible transmission entirely.
“There’s a longstanding stigma with respect to this based on a years-ago understanding as opposed to current health and medical science on the disease,” state Rep. Nicholas Duran said.
He credits it to law written in a time when people worried spitting or sharing a toilet seat with an HIV-positive individual.
This year, the Miami Democrat filed the HIV Prevention Justice Act (HB 79) in hopes of reforming the law. The bill already has favorably passed through the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee.
If it becomes law, the legislation will reclassify a failure to notify a sexual partner of HIV-positive status as a misdemeanor, instead of a felony.
“This legislation will save lives and take care of the whole community,” said Alejandro Acosta, coordinator for Equality Florida’s HIV Advocacy Project. “It will help decrease HIV stigma, encourage people to get tested, and get into treatment.”
Acosta, who is HIV-positive, said Florida “has a responsibility to match our law with current science.”
That means acknowledging HIV, far from the death sentence it was in the 1980s, can be treated as a chronic condition more on par with asthma or diabetes.
While there are 115,000 people living with HIV in Florida, there were less than 900 deaths from HIV-related causes in the state in 2016.
But the spread of the virus remains a concern, particularly in Florida. The state saw 4,957 documented new transmissions in 2016, according to Equality Florida.
But the impact of the disease remains demographically uneven. Only 22 percent of new transmissions in Florida were for women. Meanwhile, 42 percent were for black individuals and 32 percent were Latino.
And date from the Centers for Disease Control shows the condition still impacts the LGBTQ more than the public as a whole. Gay and bisexual men make up 55 percent of Americans living with HIV.
At current rates, a quarter of all gay and bisexual Latino men will get HIV at some point in their life. Half of gay and bisexual black men will contract the virus.
All this may indicate an importance in being open with sexual partners about having the virus, and Duran doesn’t want failure to disclose information completely decriminalized.
But the severe legal consequence for failing to share information has led to a high number of individuals refusing to get tested for HIV. CDC data suggests 20,000 Floridians have contracted HIV but remain unaware of their status.
In an interview with HIV Plus Magazine in 2017, Acosta declined to say how long he’d had HIV, noting the current laws in Florida open individuals up to legal risk for years.
HIV-positive people can face up to 30 years in prison for failure to disclose their status with a consensual partner, and that risk comes whether the virus gets transmitted or not.
Further, current medical treatments can make HIV medically undetectable, and in turn can make the virus virtually non-transmittable.
It raises the question what obligation should exist for an individual employment safe sex practices has to a partner when there’s virtually no risk of catching HIV from an encounter.
Duran’s bill also addresses some specific issues, like acknowledging the low risk of ever transmitting HIV through oral sex.
States like California have already reduced the penalties for HIV-positive individuals withholding their status.
Efforts to change the law failed in Florida in the past. But Duran hopes a conversation based on current science can catch the law up with modern knowledge.
He notes Hepatitis C poses a greater risk and threat to public health today than HIV. Treating HIV patients as criminals at this point does more harm than good.
“We are going to create smart policy with HIV and STDs,” he said.
Published in FLAPOL on Feb 25, 2019
