SCOTUS Rules AIDS Aid Can’t Discriminate Against Sex Workers

The Supreme Court today struck down a decade-old rule that forbade the U.S. government from providing AIDS funding to non-governmental organizations that reach out to sex workers.  When Congress and President Bush boosted funding to combat global AIDS in 2003 through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Congressman Chris Smith (R-N.J.) attached an amendment requiring that organizations could only receive funding if they took an “anti-prostitution pledge,” explicitly denouncing sex work.  As The Nation’s Melissa Gira Grant argues, the “anti-prostitution pledge requirement was a conservative attempt to conflate offering HIV prevention and treatment to sex workers with promoting the actual practice of prostitution.”  According to a recent report by the World Health Organization, preventing AIDS among sex workers is crucial to fighting the global epidemic, as female sex workers are 13.5 times more likely to acquire HIV than other women.  Four international organizations challenged the anti-prostitution pledge, which was defended by the Obama administration, in a case that ultimately made its way to the Supreme Court.  As the Washington Post reports: Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said the anti-prostitution pledge…improperly restricts the groups’ First Amendment rights… “It requires them to pledge allegiance to the government’s policy of eradicating prostitution,” he wrote.  That, Roberts wrote, the government cannot do. Today’s ruling in United States Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International was 6-2, with Justices Scalia and Thomas dissenting and Justice Kagan recusing herself.