Story here in the Washington Examiner.
Excerpt:
Two unpleasant topics of conversation most of us avoid are the epidemic of HIV/AIDS among prison inmates and a variety of sometimes violent events resulting in transmission of the disease. Some states long ago implemented policies to protect the uninfected part of the prison population while providing exceptional medical treatment and counseling to the infected population.
In South Carolina, it has worked so well since 1998 that there has only been a single transmission of HIV/AIDS to a noninfected prisoner. All that may change, however, thanks to a threat from Eric Holder’s Justice Department.
South Carolina received a letter from the now-infamous Civil Rights Division that the policy of keeping infected inmates at a designated facility, instead of scattered across the state in the general prison population, may unfairly stigmatize infected prisoners. To the Obama political appointees in the Civil Rights Division, this constitutes discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
The Justice Department objects to separate living facilities and specialized medical treatment for the HIV/AIDS prison population. Naturally, DOJ has threatened a lawsuit.
[…]South Carolina spends more than $2 million a year helping infected inmates in the very program the DOJ is challenging. “We couldn’t ever hire specialists at all of the facilities spread across the state like we can in the single Columbia facility,” Ozmint told me.
The DOJ is in a lose-lose situation. Even if DOJ wins a lawsuit, sources tell me South Carolina is simply going to cancel all of the special testing, treatment and counseling, thereby saving the state $2 million a year.
This reminds me of the activists who shut down Catholic adoption agencies because they refuse to place children with same-sex couples. They don’t care about helping people, they care about punishing people who disagree with their politically correct biases.
This is the same DOJ that declined to prosecute the Blank Panthers for voter intimidation, remember.