person wearing gloves holding HIV test

Southern Indiana’s HIV Outbreak: A Lesson on the Importance of Incentivizing HIV Testing

By 2015, major news outlets were reporting on what the CDC was calling “one of the worst documented outbreaks of HIV among IV users in the past two decades.” Between 2011 and 2015 over 200 people in southern Indiana’s Scott County acquired HIV. The primary source of the spread was the sharing of needles to inject opioid drugs. While the outbreak has now been contained, there linger many lessons to be learned from the tragedy that struck this small rural county in southeast Indiana.

Some of those lessons are about the havoc being wreaked on much of rural America by opioid abuse. But the lessons I’m focusing on here are the dangers of disincentivizing HIV testing, especially among high-risk populations like injection drug users. Read More

National Conference on HIV Criminalization

By Sterling Johnson, JD

Grinnell College in Iowa will host the first National Conference on HIV Criminalization next week, June 2-5 on its campus.

One of the stated goals of the conference will be to discuss the recent legislative changes in Iowa and how to apply the lessons to other states with laws that apply specifically to people with HIV.

Currently, 43 states criminalize actions by HIV-positive individuals. Check out our map at LawAtlas.org for more details.

US states with HIV criminalization laws

In 2009, Iowa became the center of this battle when Nick Rhoades, who is HIV-positive, had a one-time sexual encounter with another man, Adam Plendl. Three months after, Mr. Rhoades was arrested on suspicion of engaging in intimate contact without disclosing his HIV-positive status. At the time of the sexual encounter, he used a condom, had an undetectable viral load and his sexual partner did not contract HIV; however, Nick Rhoades was sentenced to 25 years in prison and classified as a sex offender. The case is now is now on appeal and being argued by Lambda Legal. The Iowa court of Appeals affirmed the conviction and the case is now under review by the Iowa Supreme Court. Mr. Rhoades’s case led to community organizers lobbying to reform the HIV criminalization law in Iowa. Read More