AIDS Researcher Wins Eviction Battle

A Greenwich Village co-op board 's year-long court battle to evict a doctor who treats persons with AIDS ended in defeat on October 17 [1984], due to the efforts of a gay rights group and the New York state attorney general's office.

The board, representing the tenants of 49 West 12th Street, told Dr. Joseph A. Sonnabend last year that the tenants wanted him out of the building because of concern for their health and the lowering of property values of their apartments due to AIDS patients entering his office.

Sonnabend, a microbiologist and the occupant of the ground floor office since 1977, consulted his lawyer, William Hibsher of the New York law firm Teitelbaum and Hiller. Hibsher is also a board member of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the organization which took the case to court and succeeded in blocking the eviction with a temporary restraining order. The order was issued on October 14, 1983, by the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Sonnabend had no quarrel with the board's right to evict him. "But the mistake they made," said Sonnabend, "was to say it was over AIDS."

Then it became a case of discrimination, said Hibsher,"against a population that is really more deserving of people's compassion and help. I think that all people know that very often discrimination against people with AIDS is another form of discrimination against gay people."

In New York State, there is no law prohibiting discrimination against people because of sexual orientation; however, Lambda used a provision of the state's human rights law protecting disabled people from discrimination as the basis for their lawsuit.

"Five of Sonnabend's patients," said Hibsher, "joined in the lawsuit for legal reasons. We were concerned that since Dr. Sonnabend is not himself a disabled person, the defendant might take the position that [Sonnabend] could not raise the disability statute in support of his legal position."

With the patients as co-plaintiffs, continued Hibsher, "they could say they are disabled persons, and they are potentially being discriminated against by the building's decision." Two of the five patients have since died of the disease.

In the court settlement, Sonnabend was awarded $10,000 in damages and a new one-year lease. The co-op must also pay $1,000 in legal costs to state Attorney General Robert Abrams's office, which acted as Lambda's co-counsel.

Hibsher sees the settlement as a landmark case that "projects a very strong image on the part of those who protect the rights of these citizens."

He continued: "It's, to our knowledge, the first litigation brought in connection with alleged discrimination against people with AIDS, and it established very importantly legal procedures in the State of New York and nationwide; One, that people with AIDS are considered disabled persons under the disability laws, and most states have a civil rights law which protects persons who are disabled from discrimination. Two, the court issued a preliminary injunction in the course of the litigation and part of its ruling was that it accepted the expert opinion that AIDS is not casually transmitted. Consequently, the court rejected any notion that a person with AIDS could be segregated or kept out of a public accommodation on the grounds of potential contagion. Three, and I think most important, the case stands for the proposition that the civil rights community, Lambda, the attorney general of the State of New York, and other litigants are not going to sit back and let people discriminate" against people who are gravely ill.

Sonnabend, who spends much of his time doing research, said that after the settlement, "some of the tenants offered their congratulations. Many tenants at the time [of the eviction attempt] were quite unhappy with the way the board proceeded."


This article was originally published in the Gay Community News (Boston) on November 10, 1984.

Bruce Hall Fights To Regain His Airline Job

Before Bruce Hall was put on what he calls "forced medical leave of absence," he had been a flight attendant for a major U.S. airline. Management made the decision to relieve him of his duties when they learned of his AIDS diagnosis not because they believed AIDS is spread by casual contact--they don't--but because, says Hall, in a telephone interview, "They're worried about the public perception should the public find out that this airline is flying people who have AIDS." The fact that the airline informed its 8,200 flight attendants "that there's no reason for them to fear someone with AIDS on board the airplane," he continues, means that "they have destroyed their own case."

Hall wants his job back. And he is putting up a courageous three-prong fight: against AIDS itself, the perception that the disease makes those it strikes vulnerable to all viruses and bacteria instead of specific ones, and job discrimination toward people with AIDS.

His battle with the airline is quite involved. Simply stated, it consists of complaints filed with the following organizations: the union (his case is tied to a similar one in Los Angeles with the same airline), the state human rights commissions in New York and Illinois (New York, he learned later, rejected the complaint after he told them about the Illinois complaint; a complaint, explains Hall, filed in one state is binding in all other states. He filed in both states because "I'm between both addresses."), and the U.S. Department of Labor, Division of Federal Contract Compliance "because the airline flies the U.S. mail. I gave them the background story the other day." And, according to Hall, the department agreed that discrimination did exist in this case.

If these complaints are "resolved unfavorably," Hall intends to go to the state courts, and if necessary, to the federal level.

Regarding his condition, he vigorously and enthusiastically reports that he is "feeling healthy as a pig."

This article was originally published in the Boston-based Gay Community News on December 8, 1984.