AIDS Lawyer Goes Judge Shopping?

An interesting point of notice in Delco HIV Kid vs. Milton Hershey School: The school made its court filing in a Harrisburg, the U.S. Court for the Middle District of Pa. The AIDS Law Project filed suit in Philadelphia, the Eastern District Court.

The alleged discrimination occured out there. So why did ALP lawyer Rhonda Goldfein file her case in Philadelphia? For the same reason most plaintiffs attempt to file in the city.

No doubt ALP lawyer Rhonda Goldfein believes she is more likely to get a more sympathetic judge and/or jury there. Somebody tell me I'm wrong.

UPDATE: Also noticed: In order to protect the identity of this 13-year-old kid the school refers to him as John Doe in its filing. But the ALP refers to him as Abraham Smith. I thought that was his real name, until I read in the ALP press release that said it wasn't. It too was a name made up to protect the boy's identity.

Give the ALP credit, Abraham Smith sounds a whole better than John Doe. It's downright presidential. The ALP has already won the Battle of the Pseudonyms.

UPDATE II: In response to yesterday's column in which I more or less defended the school's position I got an email from someone named Donald Delp who wrote:

you are an ignorant a--hole watch the ryan white story

I didn't watch the Ryan White Story, but I am certainly familiar with it. While I don't often rely on Wikipedia to get everything right, it provides the basics here:

Ryan Wayne White (December 6, 1971 – April 8, 1990)[1] was an American teenager from Kokomo, Indiana, who became a national poster child for HIV/AIDS in the United States, after being expelled from middle school because of his infection. A hemophiliac, he became infected with HIV from a contaminated blood treatment and, when diagnosed in December 1984, was given six months to live. Doctors said he posed no risk to other students, but AIDS was poorly understood at the time, and when White tried to return to school, many parents and teachers in Kokomo rallied against his attendance.[2] A lengthy legal battle with the school system ensued, and media coverage of the case made White into a national celebrity and spokesman for AIDS research and public education. He appeared frequently in the media with celebrities such as Elton John, Michael Jackson and Phil Donahue. Surprising his doctors, White lived five years longer than predicted and died in April 1990, one month prior to his high school graduation.

What this case has in common with the Ryan White story is not much and you have to be an AIDS activist, lawyer or liberal to think that it does.

AIDS activists and their lawyers are asserting that "Abraham Smith" poses and will pose no significant danger or risk to his classmates at the Milton Hershey School over the next four or five years. School officials however are not so sure. These kids live in a fairly cloistered environment and sexual activity is far from unheard of among their teenage students. Despite the school's best efforts to repress it, sex between students happens, sometimes with unfortunate consequences. But in this kid's case the consequences could go from being unfortunate to lethal. This is not a public, day school. It is a private, coed, boarding school and all that that entails.

We have learned a lot since Ryan White's day about how AIDS is and isn't spread between people. And with all we know, today AIDS is still the number one killer of African-American women between the ages of 24 and 44. Some 85 percent of these women get it from male sex partners who didn't tell them they were HIV positive.

It is pretty to think that Abraham Smith (between the ages of 13 and 18 and after) would never behave so irresponsibly. With the right counseling and self discipline there is a good chance that he won't. But who should be forced to risk the lives of 1,850 other children on that bet? And just who is being an ignorant a--hole here?

UPDATE III: This evening I spoke to Rob Duston, a lawyer for the school, who told me that the school never did actually file its request for judicial review in federal court, that they were beaten to the courthouse by Rhonda Goldfein. What we've been reading on the Internet is a "draft" of the school's proposed filing and it should have been labeled that way, he said, but it wasn't.

Still, the arguments will be the same ones that will be presented if the case goes to a judge.

I also spoke to Connie McNamara, the school's vice president of communications. More about that conversation tomorrow.