Opening the Schoolhouse Door to the AIDS Virus: Policy Making, Politics, and Personality in a Queens County Courtroom, 1985-86

19 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change 259 (2017)

47 Pages Posted: 10 Feb 2016 Last revised: 8 Mar 2017

Date Written: 2017

Abstract

Public health policy operates in a democratic paradox. The police power exists to protect individuals from harms they cannot themselves fend off, but every restriction of individual freedom in the name of public health runs against constitutionally protected individual rights. Public health officials are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. But policy makers can take steps to avoid litigation by partnering with the public in contentious public health decisions.

In 1985, New York City announced it would not automatically prohibit children with AIDS from attending public schools. Parents and children in Queens took to the streets in a massive boycott of the first day of school. They carried signs proclaiming "We want good grades, not AIDS." One child dressed as an AIDS victim and was paraded through the streets in a makeshift coffin to protest the perceived threat a child diagnosed with AIDS would pose to other children. Ultimately, local school boards took the issue to court and put public health policy making on trial.

District 27 Community School Board v. Board of Education and events leading to the lawsuit exemplify the democratic paradox. A largely overlooked case, District 27 is one of the most important early AIDS cases. It was the first to consider the disease in depth. The case established the dearth of evidence that AIDS could be transmitted casually. And District 27 signaled that AIDS did not demand and law did not permit discrimination. This article dusts off District 27 for its thirtieth anniversary and uses New York City’s policy-making process as a case study for public health policy making in an epidemic. It suggests ways lawyers and policy makers can balance secrecy and transparency against democratic ideals, as well as how valuing the public and allowing public input enhances policy decisions.

Keywords: law, policy, public health, New York City, AIDS, HIV, public school, administrative law, health law, public policy, transparency, ryan white, fritz schwarz, frederick a.o. schwarz, robert sullivan, discrimination, anti-discrimination, lgbt, due process, americans with disabilities act, education

Suggested Citation

Alagood, R. Kyle, Opening the Schoolhouse Door to the AIDS Virus: Policy Making, Politics, and Personality in a Queens County Courtroom, 1985-86 (2017). 19 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change 259 (2017), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2729264

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