MANHATTAN, NY — U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero has delivered a blow to the federal government’s insistence that groups hoping to use American dollars to fight AIDS outside of the country denounce prostitution. In a decision handed down this week, the judge concluded that the funding requirements equated to suppressing free speech.Marrero sited the Supreme Court’s repeated conclusion “that speech, or an agreement not to speak, cannot be compelled or coerced as a condition of participation in a government program.”
His findings temporarily block the government from enforcing its demand for an anti-prostitution pledge while the case continues. Toward that end, Marrero has asked both sides to propose a preliminary injunction that conforms with his finding within the next two weeks.
The government has argued that its policy, passed legislatively by Congress in 2003, is designed to reduce risky behavior associated with HIV and AIDS. According to the law, both foreign and domestic groups that work to fight AIDS but refuse to pledge their opposition to “sex trafficking” and prostitution lose their right to federal funding. In addition to adopting such a policy, each group must sign a governmental form assuring that feds that such a policy exists.
The Alliance for Open Society International Inc., Open Society Institute, and Pathfinder International sued to challenge the law last September, after adopting statements that acknowledge harms related to prostitution. Among their complaints are objections to the U.S government’s attempts to tell them how to fulfill their policies.
The group’s attorney, Rebekah Diller, calls the decision “a tremendous victory for public health,” and says that it “will enable these organizations to serve very vulnerable women.”
In addition to anti-prostitution pledges, recipients must tell their clients about condom failure rates and compete equally with funding applicants with “a religious or moral objection” to condoms, needle exchanges, and other preventative methods or treatment programs.
