American Center for Law and Justice: Federal Funding, the HIV Virus, and a Form of Human Trafficking: The ACLJ Fights for Human Rights at the Supreme Court
Walter M. Weber, senior counsel for the ACLJ, writes, “The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case, for the second time, involving the federal government’s program of overseas aid to fight the spread of the HIV virus. In U.S. Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International (AID v. AOSI), grantees challenged part of the 2003 President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) initiative … [In the case,] grantees objected to the requirement that to be eligible for funding, applicants must expressly oppose sex trafficking and prostitution … [G]rantees have claimed that ‘policy requirement’ violated their First Amendment rights. Now the ACLJ is, for a second time, defending the policy requirement in a friend-of-the-court brief… In its 2013 decision, a 6-2 majority (Justice Kagan was recused) ruled that the federal government was unconstitutionally forcing private agencies to adopt a policy position against their will. The case went back to the lower courts, which struck down the policy not just as to domestic grant applicants, but also their foreign affiliates. That prompted the federal government to seek and obtain Supreme Court review once again… The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case on March 25th and will likely issue its decision by the end of June” (2/18).