Alito on HIV Discrimination

See this article in the New York Blade. It begins:

U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito signed on to a 2001 federal appeals court decision striking down a policy that prohibited the placement of a foster child into a Pennsylvania home because another child living there had AIDS.

The unanimous decision by the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia — where Alito has served as a judge since 1990 — declared that the policy adopted by Center County, Pa., violated a clause in the Americans With Disabilities Act, which bans AIDS related discrimination.

Alito’s support for the 2001 decision, which was hailed by AIDS activists, came 15 years after he helped write a Justice Department opinion during the Reagan administration asserting that employers had a legal right to fire people with HIV due to “fear of contagion, whether reasonable for not.”

The two, seemingly contradictory actions by Alito on AIDS issues have prompted gay rights attorneys to continue to examine his long record of legal writings to determine how he would likely rule on gay and AIDS related issues on the Supreme Court.