Every state makes it a crime to intentionally injure someone — like shooting or stabbing them without justification.
That’s why it has long been a crime in most states to intentionally infect someone with a disease — including a sexually transmitted disease (STD). After all, the consequences of an STD can be just as long lasting and deadly as if the perpetrator shot or stabbed the victim.
But apparently the Biden administration disagrees. Led by radical Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is suing Tennessee for attempting to enforce a statute that is designed to protect the public from HIV-positive prostitutes.
According to Clarke and her cronies, Tennessee’s attempt to protect is citizens is actually thinly veiled discrimination that violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In addition to Clarke, the zealots who filed this lawsuit against Tennessee include Disability Rights Section Chief Rebecca Bond, Deputy Chief Kevin Kijewski, Trial Attorney Stephanie Berger, and Trial Attorney Ali Szemanski. A brief look through their resumes — even those of the lower-ranking trial attorneys — shows that they have worked for various organizations that support the far-Left’s pet projects.
For example, Berger previously spent several years working for the Empire State Pride Agenda, which disbanded after then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order protecting transgender rights. And Szemanski previously worked or interned for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of Boston, the ACLU of Pennsylvania, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice, and the MacArthur Justice Center.
These connections to the radical Left shouldn’t come as a surprise. The politicized and Left-leaning hiring practices within the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division have been a long-standing problem. Only a full embrace of the far-Left’s worldview can explain the filing of this otherwise inexplicable lawsuit.
Passed in 1991 at the height of the AIDS epidemic, Tennessee’s aggravated prostitution statute provides that a “person commits aggravated prostitution when, knowing that such person is infected with HIV, the person engages in sexual activity as a business or is an inmate in a house of prostitution or loiters in a public place for the purpose of being hired to engage in sexual activity.” In other words, if a person knows he or she has HIV and engages in prostitution (itself a crime), then that person faces harsher penalties.
According to the Biden Justice Department, however, this is discrimination because it unfairly treats individuals differently based solely on their HIV-positive status and “does not require prosecuting entities to make any individualized determinations in order to achieve a conviction.”
But think that through: It’s not discrimination to prosecute an alcoholic for driving while under the influence. And it’s not discrimination to prosecute a drug addict for possessing or selling drugs. Tennessee isn’t prosecuting and punishing people based on their status but instead is prosecuting and punishing them based on their conduct and the risk of harm that conduct poses to the community. It’s why most states prosecute armed robbery more harshly than unarmed robbery — lawmakers view the former as posing a greater risk, and being more harmful, to the community. The same is true here.
Of course, the Justice Department doesn’t have a sound legal argument against this. They simply allege that since “the passage of Tennessee’s aggravated prostitution statute, there has been significant progress in the understanding of and treatment of HIV.” According to them, “beliefs and assumptions that individuals with HIV will spread it, or that having HIV is a death sentence, are now outdated and unfounded.”
That may well be true, but as that same filing readily admits, that largely depends on following proper protocols for medication and treatment. Furthermore, Tennessee isn’t targeting the HIV population at large — only those who know they are infected and are engaging in the crime of prostitution where the transmission risk is likely much higher than in other settings.
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Why shouldn’t Tennessee be able to punish criminal conduct with aggravating circumstances such as these more severely? After all, no one is seriously contending that engaging in prostitution while being HIV-positive is less dangerous and less harmful than doing so without.
The Justice Department filing identifies “Complainant A” as one of the “victims” of Tennessee’s supposedly discriminatory law. According to the Justice Department, “Complainant A is a Black transgender woman who lives in Memphis, Tennessee.” This individual had HIV, knew it, and engaged in “prostitution near a church or school.” Tennessee charged this individual with aggravated prostitution, which of course comes with the subsequent sex-offender registration requirements and other collateral consequences.
Because Tennessee simply enforced the law, the Justice Department now says the state discriminated against this individual. In fact, they’re asking the court to prohibit any further enforcement of Tennessee’s aggravated prostitution statute, remove individuals from the sex-offender registry who have been convicted of aggravated prostitution, terminate reporting requirements for individuals on the sex-offender registry who have been convicted of aggravated prostitution, expunge their records, and provide compensatory damages (money!) to Complainant A and others the Justice Department has deemed harmed.
With all the problems facing the Biden administration this year, their dedication to extorting everyday Americans to advance a radical social agenda is astounding. Americans deserve, and should expect, more from a department supposedly dedicated to seeking justice. Enough is enough.
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Zack Smith is a legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.