A federal lawsuit was filed this week against a boarding school in Hershey for HIV discrimination against a local teen.
AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania filed suit last week against the Milton Hershey School on behalf of a 13-year-old boy who was turned down for admittance to the school because he is HIV-positive.
The school educates approximately 1,850 disadvantaged youth from pre-kindergarten to high school.
School officials acknowledge that the teen, a Philadelphia resident, was rejected solely because he has HIV, saying that the institution is not equipped to handle a student with a disease that could threaten his fellow students.
“In order to protect our children, we cannot accommodate the needs of students with chronic communicable diseases that pose a direct threat to the health and safety of others,” the school said in a statement. “The reason is simple. We are serving children, and no child can be assumed to always make responsible decisions [that] protect the well-being of others.”
The school said it undertook a “careful review and analysis,” but determined it could not “put our children at risk.”
Milton Hershey added that it was considering asking a federal judge to weigh in on the matter, but the teen’s family took the “adversarial action” of filing the suit.
The school is expected to file a response to the suit within the next month.
AIDS Law Project executive director Ronda Goldfein said the institution’s reasoning for rejecting the student’s application is too vague and violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.
“They’ve only talked about their general concerns; they haven’t specified anything at all and that is at the heart of what’s wrong with this case,” Goldfein said this week. “Under the law, if you think someone could be a threat then you need to do an individualized assessment and figure out exactly what the concerns are. You can’t just deny someone admission because at some time in the future you could be concerned about something that could happen. That’s like saying you’re not going to admit a blind student because at some point in some unspecified way the student could fall.”
Goldfein compared the case to that of Ryan White, who was expelled from his public middle school in the 1980s because he had AIDS.
The school, however, said the nature of its institution is inherently different.
“Milton Hershey School is not a day school, where students go home to their family at the end of the day. Instead, this is a unique home-like environment, where children live in homes with 10-12 other students on our campus 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” the school said.
Milton S. Hershey, founder of the Hershey’s candy company, created the school in 1909, and the institution continues to be funded by its founder’s Milton Hershey School Trust, the assets of which exceed $7 billion.
The overnight structure of Milton Hershey should not be problematic for a student with HIV, Goldfein said.
“The law is clear and science is clear that students with HIV don’t present a risk in school and don’t present a risk in daycamp settings,” she said. “What is it about the after-dark hours that somehow changes that idea? In a residential setting, after dark is when the house parent should be supervising anyway.”
Prior to the suit, this fall the student’s family filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission alleging discrimination based on disability and intends to pursue appropriate administrative remedies.
While Goldfein’s organization has handled an array of HIV/AIDS discrimination cases, she said the school’s willingness to acknowledge that the student’s HIV status was the sole barrier to admission is unusual.
“We’ve certainly seen cases that are similar, but the fact that they’re so blatantly admitting that that was their reason is pretty stunning,” she said.
Last weekend, Lawrence Stallworth, an HIV-positive 20-year-old who contracted the disease in high school, launched a petition on Change.org to urge the school to reverse its decision. As of press time, the petition had nearly 5,000 signatures.
“It shouldn’t be the responsibility of a 13-year-old boy to teach the Milton Hershey School about the science of HIV or the moral obligation educators have to meet the needs of all students,” Stallworth said. “But this young man is doing just that — and we all have a responsibility to have his back.”
The boy is currently on the honor roll at his Delaware County public school and takes part in numerous extracurricular and athletic activities.
Goldfein said the support he’s seen from the petition and the community at large has been impressive.
“People feel really strongly about this, which is encouraging to our client,” she said. “He’s feeling pretty confused that the school said he presented such a danger so to hear from so many others that they know he’s not a danger, is really important to him.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].