Columbia School of Law’s Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic is pioneering a field of law that does not always receive enough attention.
The clinic has become a key project for the students and faculty at Columbia Law School intended to benefit HIV-positive immigrants looking to come to the U.S.
The clinic works on the individual level by representing foreign nationals with HIV who are seeking asylum in the U.S. from discrimination in their home countries. It also operates on the federal level through legislative advocacy of issues affecting people with HIV/AIDS, as well as women, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals.
“The law school recognized that gender and sexuality law is a critically important area,” professor Suzanne Goldberg, the clinic’s director, said. Since the Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic began in 2006, it has helped both a gay man from Jamaica and a lesbian woman from Turkmenistan gain asylum in the U.S.
For one semester, students in the clinic work diligently to prove that an immigrant who is persecuted in his or her home country should qualify for asylum due to their HIV-positive status. While discrimination targeted at HIV-positive people has not traditionally been an automatic qualifier for asylum, the clinic believes that people who are persecuted for living with HIV should be granted refuge. One broader goal of the clinic is to institutionalize HIV as an asylum qualifier, since courts currently use it only on a case-by-case basis.
Cases involving this issue are brought to the clinic by the legal team at the New York branch of he national organization Immigration Equality, which addresses issues faced by gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and HIV-positive immigrants, based in New York City.
Thanks to organizations like Immigration Equality and to legal aid from clinics such as the one at the law school, recent strides have been made towards increasing the rights of HIV-infected immigrants. Over the summer, President Bush acted to end a 1993 Congressional law that banned people with HIV from entering the US. The public awaits the final decision on this issue from the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Under the leadership of Goldberg, the clinic has continued to push for rights for HIV-positive individuals. The Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic is “the only permanent clinic that does this type of law in the country,” Brad Mullins, Law ’10 and participant in the program, said.
Last year, the clinic included fourteen students who collectively contributed over 4,500 hours of work.
Goldberg also stressed the importance of allowing students to learn in a clinical setting. “Having a clinic would provide students with the chance to work directly on cutting-edge issues and contribute to communities in need of legal support.