Twenty-First Century Regression: The Disparate Impact of HIV Transmission Laws on Gay Men

In this Comment, Siobhán Murillo analyzes United States legislation that criminalizes HIV transmission amongst gay men and compares these statutes to similar ones in Uganda, Australia, and Niger. The Comment discusses the history of HIV/AIDS and the historical discrimination against homosexual men in the United States since states began enacting HIV-specific criminalization laws in the late 1980s. However, these laws fuel the stigma surrounding HIV and disparately impact gay men. Siobhán Murillo explores the more appropriate solution: to create a new model criminal statute that criminalizes the transmission of HIV/AIDS but has stricter intent requirements, a higher level of scrutiny, a duty to disclose one\u27s HIV status, and has accompanying defenses, penalties, and remedies. This new model criminal statute could criminalize the intentional transmission of HIV but cause significantly less discrimination against gay men than current HIV criminal laws