"A three-judge panel on the Fourth Circuit overturned the lower court's ruling in its judgment on the case, arguing that the military has a "rational basis" for maintaining medical standards within the US army. The judges wrote in the ruling: "In this case, the military has articulated its need to have fit service members who can fulfill its military mission without complications from medical conditions that could compromise deployment functions, contribute to conflicts with foreign nations during deployment, and add costs over those generally necessary to maintain fit service members.""
"HIV is no longer the death sentence it once was at the height of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s. Developments in treatment have massively reduced the mortality rate and almost completely destroyed the risk of transmissibility. The current primary treatment for HIV, anti-retroviral therapy (ART), allows HIV-positive individuals to live long, healthy lives and almost completely eliminates the risk of transmission, according to the National Institute of Health (NIH)."
The Fourth Circuit reinstated a US military policy that permits barring people living with HIV from enlisting, reversing a lower court's August 2024 block. The policy allows HIV-positive citizens to be rejected regardless of transmission risk. The court ruled unanimously that the military has a rational basis to maintain medical standards and articulated a need for fit service members who can fulfill missions without complications, deployment constraints, foreign conflicts, and additional costs. Advances in anti-retroviral therapy (ART) have drastically reduced mortality and almost eliminated transmission risk, enabling long healthy lives for HIV-positive individuals. Lambda Legal, which filed the 2022 challenge, expressed deep disappointment.
Read at PinkNews | Latest lesbian, gay, bi and trans news | LGBTQ+ news
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