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Legal help for those with HIV/AIDS
Since 1988, a Philadelphia nonprofit practice has been
helping clients suffering from the disease.
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
Inquirer Staff Writer
The case was perfect for the
Philadelphia-based AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania.
The client was a 56-year-old man with
AIDS, legally blind and with heart disease, desperately needing nursing
home care. A local facility declined to care for him because its
employees would be "uncomfortable" with an AIDS patient.
What made the case unusual was that
it happened not in the late '80s, when the epidemic was new, the facts
few and the myths plentiful, but in April.
Executive director Ronda B. Goldfein
says the case of the Williamsport, Pa., man - now the subject of fair
housing complaints before state and federal agencies - is why the AIDS
Law Project is needed and is thriving after 15 years.
Despite strides made in educating the
public about HIV and AIDS and the ways in which the virus is
transmitted, ignorance and discrimination persist.
"Our biggest problem is the
perception that [the epidemic is] over," Goldfein said.
But the epidemic continues and
patients' needs haven't changed, they've just evolved with increased
medical knowledge, improved drug treatments and longer life spans. So
too have their legal needs.
In the beginning, Goldfein said, the
issue was discrimination: people rejected for jobs, fired, or denied
promotions; denied health-insurance coverage for expensive treatment; or
denied access to housing and public services.
Of the 1,700 calls the AIDS Law
Project gets annually, Goldfein said, only about 10 percent now involve
alleged discrimination because of AIDS or HIV status. Today's clients,
she said, are more likely looking for legal help to remain at home as
the disease progresses, to obtain disability benefits, write wills or
arrange trusts for their children.
"This is all because... [people with
HIV] are alive and well," Goldfein said.
One thing has not changed: The AIDS
Law Project remains free and the nation's only independent, nonprofit
public-interest law center devoted to the legal needs of people with HIV
and AIDS.
In other cities, social service
groups formed to respond to the epidemic, such as the Gay Men's Health
Crisis in New York, which brought in lawyers to serve clients.
Goldfein said the AIDS Law Project
board has rejected overtures to merge with social agencies or larger law
firms.
"We feel our clients need to know
that this is an independent place to go where there are no divided
allegiances," Goldfein said.
As recalled by founder David W.
Webber, 48, independence was almost accidental.
In 1984, Webber was four years out of
Temple law school after trading an undergraduate degree in musicology
for a legal career. Webber said he was trying to carve out a solo
practice in employment-discrimination law and began exploring the
emerging area of gay legal rights.
David Kairys, a law professor at
Temple and a civil rights lawyer, said that Webber shared office space
with him and partner David Rudovsky in Center City and "began writing
wills for gay people."
Although Pennsylvania does not legally
recognize gay unions, Kairys said Webber figured out how to use
established law to carry out gay couples' wishes.
"He had so many gay people coming in
to see him that we were running out of room in our waiting room," Kairys
said.
Webber's contacts in the gay
community, he said, led him to become legal director of the Philadelphia
AIDS Task Force in 1984.
"They were running a social services
agency," Webber said, "but the social workers were having problems
getting lawyers. They had no money and the clients certainly didn't have
any money to pay."
Webber said he started working one
day a week on AIDS cases but the number of desperate, often dying,
clients soon outstripped his time and finances.
The solution, Webber said, became
obvious: "I really wasn't making a profit, so my idea was to make it a
real nonprofit."
In October 1988, the AIDS Law Project
of Pennsylvania was born.
Less than a year later, Webber's
group won Philadelphia's first AIDS discrimination case against a
funeral director who had refused to bring the body of an AIDS patient
into his funeral home.
"I tell my law students," Kairys
said, "that [Webber] is an example of a lawyer who succeeded by seeing a
group of clients whose basic legal needs were unmet.
"It was rather courageous because
this was in a day when it was all rumor and little was known about how
AIDS was spread."
By 1992, Webber said, the AIDS Law
Project's client list was burgeoning and he was "burning out" fighting
for clients who sometimes died as he was close to winning their cases.
"We used to estimate that we would
get a new generation of clients every 18 months," Webber said.
So in 1992, Webber left the
organization he founded, opting to write and focus on major cases with
legal or public-policy significance.
Webber's spot was taken by staff
lawyer Nan Feyler. Coincidentally that year, Goldfein joined as a
volunteer lawyer.
Goldfein, a lawyer for six years,
said she was dissatisfied with working for a law firm representing
asbestos companies. She was also still feeling the impact of losing two
friends to AIDS.
Within six months she began working
on a case that two years later resulted in the nation's first settlement
involving AIDS under the new Americans With Disabilities Act.
Under the agreement, the Philadelphia
Fire Department agreed to provide AIDS education to more than 2,000
firefighters and emergency personnel. The AIDS Law Project and the U.S.
Justice Department had sued on behalf of a Philadelphia student who was
refused care by a city rescue crew after they learned he had AIDS.
In 2000, after Feyler resigned to
pursue a master's degree in public health, Goldfein became executive
director.
In addition to editing and
contributing to the annual publication AIDS and the Law, Webber, 48, is
editor-in-chief of AIDS & Public Policy Journal and a champion for
nonprescription availability of hypodermic syringes in Pennsylvania.
Goldfein, meanwhile, said she was
planning to remain with the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania and to make
the organization truly reflect its name and the increasing number of its
potential clients.
"We need an office in Western
Pennsylvania," she said.
Contact staff writer Joseph A.
Slobodzian at 215-854-2658 or
jslobodzian@phillynews.com
AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania
1211 Chestnut Street, Suite 600 •
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Phone:
(215) 587-9377 • Fax: (215)
587-9902
Intake Hours: 9:30
am-1:00 pm
Se Habla Español
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