A Pennsylvania school that denied a student admission because of his HIV status has agreed to pay the boy’s family more than a half-million dollars.
AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania, which represented the plaintiff in his suit against Milton Hershey School, a boarding school in Central Pennsylvania that educates disadvantaged youth, announced the settlement Wednesday.
The school will pay the boy and his mother $700,000, and will pay an additional $15,000 in penalties assessed by the U.S. Department of Justice, which investigated the case.
Last December, the school rejected the then-13-year-old boy’s application for admission, saying the decision was made “in order to protect our children.”
AIDS Law Project filed a federal lawsuit early this year.
This summer the school apologized and re-invited the student to apply. At the time, the school instituted a nondiscrimination policy inclusive of HIV status.
“This case renewed a nationwide discussion about whether people with HIV represent a risk to others in casual settings,” said AIDS Law Project executive director Ronda Goldfein. “The question has once again been definitively answered: They do not.”
The student, identified in the suit as Abraham Smith, said in a statement this week that he is “very glad this is over.”
“It should have never been an issue in the first place,” he added. “I will never recoup my eighth-grade year in school. Though I had a good one academically, I was too engulfed with this to enjoy the fun of going to high school. Now it’s time for me to start healing internally and my mother said that will come in time also.”
— Jen Colletta