Nevada State Sen. Dallas Harris, D-Las Vegas, works in her office at the State Legislature in Carson City Tuesday, March 30, 2021.
Sunday, April 4, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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CARSON CITY — A state lawmaker is pushing to update Nevada’s laws regarding the criminal transmission of HIV, which many activists say are based on an incomplete and flawed understanding of the virus.
Senate Bill 275, sponsored by state Sen. Dallas Harris, D-Las Vegas, would bring laws regarding the transmission of HIV into line with those for other communicable diseases.
It’s a class B felony in Nevada to intentionally engage in activities likely to spread HIV, the virus that can cause AIDS. The bill, which was heard Thursday in committee, would change that to a warning on the first offense and a misdemeanor on a second offense — the same as for intentionally spreading any other communicable disease, including COVID-19.
Activists say that laws criminalizing HIV date from a time period in which transmission wasn’t fully understood and people were concerned about catching the virus in ways they couldn’t, such as through saliva or touching.
Many contend that the laws do not take into account medical advances, such as antiretroviral treatments that can cut a patient’s viral load to a point in which the disease cannot be passed on through sex. In current law, a person does not need to transmit the disease to be eligible for a criminal charge, only to take part in activities that could.
Speaking in support of the bill for the progressive advocacy group Battle Born Progress, Alex Camberos called the laws “outdated” and said they discourage testing, treatment and disclosure.
“These laws were first established decades ago during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when little was known about it,” Camberos said. “This led to disproportionate marginalization of gender and sexual minorities and communities of color.”
According to a 2019 report from the state Department of Health and Human Services, 11,769 Nevadans have HIV, about 84% of them men.
André Wade, state director of the LGBTQ rights group Silver State Equality, said Nevada laws on the matter are outdated and ineffective. They contribute to the stigma around the disease while doing very little to stop the spread, he said.
“HIV is a public health issue, not a criminal one,” Wade said. “Our laws should reflect that.”
Harris’ bill is the product of Senate Bill 284 from the 2019 legislative session. That bill, sponsored by former state Sen. David Parks, D-Las Vegas, created the Advisory Task Force on HIV Exposure Modernization. A report the task force delivered to the Legislature contained many recommendations that made it into Harris’ bill.
The report recommended that any category B felony charges regarding HIV transmission be lowered, and the task force wrote that “Nevada should take a public health approach, rather than a criminal approach, to fighting the HIV epidemic.”
“What you’re looking at in this bill is the result of that work product,” Harris said. “I’m bringing the bill because obviously this is an important issue. I’m a big fan of doing what’s right, and this is clearly what’s right.”
Parks has been trying to pass a measure that would modernize Nevada’s HIV laws since the 2013 legislative session. It stalled out every time, so in 2019 he worked to create the task force rather than change the law by legislative action.
Parks said the laws can create situations in which people do not want to be tested for HIV, as doing so and testing positive could potentially open them to criminal charges.
“If you’re going to be potentially criminally charged, you’re going to want to do everything that you can to avoid being tested,” Parks said. “Because of the laws imposing criminal penalties, your life can really be turned upside down were you to be tested and to be subsequently charged with exposing someone else.”
Harris said she was working with stakeholders, including those in the health care field, to gather support.
A spokesperson for the Southern Nevada Health District said the agency is working with Harris to provide information and input on the bill but did not take a public stance.
The bill received support in the Thursday hearing from both the Clark and Washoe county public defender’s offices.
“Instead of dealing with HIV as it is, a public health issue, Nevada’s criminal code has been used as an ineffective hammer to solve problems the criminal code was never intended to solve,” said John Piro, the chief deputy public defender at the Clark County public defender’s office.
Nathan Cisneros, the HIV criminalization analyst at UCLA Law School’s Williams Institute, said in the hearing of the bill that 37 people had been arrested in Nevada on HIV transmission charges, with around two-thirds of those individual charges being sex work.
HIV criminal exposure laws are generally the purview of states.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, many state laws were passed at a time when little was known about HIV transmission. Some states even criminalized behavior that cannot transmit HIV, such as biting and spitting.
Many states enacted HIV transmission laws in the late 1980s.
According to the CDC, five states — California, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan and North Carolina — have updated their laws regarding HIV transmission since 2014.
A 2016 article in the Emory International Law Review cited a growing concern that HIV transmission laws would be selectively enforced against gay men and “increase both fear of and discrimination toward” people living with HIV.
Harris said there was a concerted effort in the late 1980s and into the 1990s to “put this stigma into law” nationally.
“It’s often more difficult to remove stigma than it is to get it in there in the first place,” Harris said. “You see that in lots of different areas.”
Lawmakers did not vote on the bill during its hearing in the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, and none took any blatantly negative stances. Harris said she was “100% confident” the bill would pass.
