Appellate panel ruling boots prisoners with HIV out of the kitchen.

HIV-positive inmates at California's medical-services prison can be barred from working in the institution's kitchen--not because they may pass the virus on to other inmates but for security reasons, a federal appeals court panel has ruled. (Gates v. Rowland, 39 F.3d 1439 (9th Cir. 1994).

Although the state acknowledged that HIV transmission through food would be highly unlikely, if not impossible, it argued that allowing HIV-positive inmates to work in food-service positions could incite rioting among prisoners who fear they may contract the virus from kitchen workers.

"While I understand what motivated the ruling, it is wrong," said American Civil liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Matthew Coles, who represented the inmates with HIV. "It creates a serious problem for people with disabilities. This decision is a capitulation to mob rule."

The segregation rule is one of the final issues to be resolved in a series of civil rights lawsuits filed in 1988 against the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. The ACLU suits sought to integrate inmates with disabilities into the general inmate population. In most instances they were successful, Coles said.

Attorneys for the HIV positive inmates are not giving up. They have filed a petition for review of the decision by the entire bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

"It's a terrible decision," said Sanford Jay Rosen of San Francisco, a cooperating plaintiffs' attorney in the case. "It's inconsistent with a decision by another panel of the Ninth Circuit and also with an Eleventh Circuit decision." (Jeldness v. Pearce, 30 F.3d 1220 (9th Cir. 1994), and Harris v. Thigpen, 941 F.2d 1495 (11th Cir. 1991).

Michael Santoki, supervising deputy attorney general for the state, said the ruling essentially gives California prison authorities broad discretion to determine security measures in a prison setting.

The ACLU said that rather than barring HIV-positive inmates from food-service jobs, the organization wanted prison administrators to offer better AIDS education to all inmates in order to quash irrational fears about how the virus is transmitted.

Santoki said the prison already offers and will continue to offer adequate AIDS education to inmates. The appeals panel, he said, found that "you can't educate people's fears away when they're stuck in prison. These are not socially well-adjusted people."

"It's refreshing to see a court recognize that running a prison is a different undertaking [compared to other public facilities] and that some deference needs to be given to those who run the prison," he said.

The California Medical Facility houses inmates with serious medical needs. Some 440 of the state's 1,100 HIV-positive inmates are incarcerated there, making it the largest HIV inmate population in the state prison system, according to California Department of Corrections records.