The Tennessee government has agreed to begin scrubbing its sex offender registry of dozens of people who were convicted of prostitution while having HIV, reversing a practice that federal lawsuits have challenged as draconian and discriminatory. This story also ran on . It can be .
For more than three decades, Tennessee’s “aggravated prostitution” laws have made prostitution a misdemeanor for most sex workers but a felony for those who are HIV-positive. Tennessee toughened penalties in 2010 by reclassifying prostitution with HIV as a “violent sexual offense” with a lifetime registration as a sex offender — even if protection is used. At least 83 people are believed to be on Tennessee’s sex offender registry solely because of these laws, with most living in the Memphis area, where undercover police officers and prosecutors most often invoked the statute, commonly against Black and transgender women, according to a lawsuit filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union and four women who were convicted of aggravated prostitution.
The Department of Justice in a separate suit earlier this year. Subscribe to KFF Health News' free Weekly Edition. Both lawsuits argue that Tennessee law does not account for evolving science on the transmission of HIV or precautions that prevent its spread, like use of condoms.
Both lawsuits also argue that labeling a person as a sex offender because of HIV unfairly limits where they can live and work and stops them from being alo.
