After two states fully repealed their HIV criminalization laws earlier this year, activists are hopeful the momentum will continue elsewhere. At the same time, they are also prepping for states and the federal government to roll back hard-fought wins for people living with HIV across the country. 

In March, North Dakota became just the fourth state in the country to repeal a law that made it a crime to expose someone to HIV without their knowledge; Maryland followed two months later. 

“What I love about state wins right now is that we know none of this is going to be coming and happening at the federal level,” said Jada Hicks from the Center for HIV Law and Policy (CHLP). “So in a time when it’s really easy to be disheartened by what is happening in the world, I feel hope in the fact that there are states that are making progress still.”

Kris Fair, a Democrat delegate who represents District 3A in Maryland’s Frederick County, helped shepherd the bill to repeal the state’s law in a culmination of 12 years of work by activists, experts, and lawmakers. The bill was named in honor of Carlton R. Smith, a Baltimore-area HIV decriminalization activist who died last year. 

Fair, who was just 5 years old when the law was originally passed in the state in 1989, said the repeal would increase access to testing and treatment, and free people from the specter of malicious prosecution. 

“It’s not every day you get to pass a law that really has an impact—a real, tangible impact in people’s lives,” Fair said. “I don’t think that feeling will ever leave me, the idea that I got to be part of a team that did something really special.”

In North Dakota, Jason Grueneich, executive director of HIV-focused nonprofit Shine Bright & Live, said when state Rep. Gretchen Dobervich first proposed repealing the state’s HIV law three legislative sessions—or six years—ago, she was basically laughed out of committee. That’s especially surprising considering the bipartisan support Dobervich’s bill received earlier this year when it was reintroduced for a third time and ultimately passed. 

Both Grueneich and Fair touted the years’ worth of careful and intentional relationship-building, oftentimes with unexpected allies across the aisle, that made both wins possible. They also hope to lend their expertise and experience to other states aiming to repeal their own HIV criminal statutes. 

If little, extremely conservative North Dakota could do this, it’s time everybody else does.

Jason Grueneich, executive director of Shine Bright & Live

“We took this as like a gold star of pride that we were able to navigate this,” Grueneich said, adding that the momentum must spread regionally. “If little, extremely conservative North Dakota could do this, it’s time everybody else does.”

Lawmakers have traditionally amended HIV criminal laws to comport with the science of treatment and prevention, instead of fully repealing the laws that are almost universally seen as draconian, outdated, and unscientific. 

HIV criminalization laws also target Black people living with the virus, according to roughly a dozen studies by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law going back a decade, each focusing on states that now or at one time had HIV-related criminal laws. In Maryland, for example, 82% of people charged under the state’s HIV criminal law were Black. 

The first state to repeal its HIV criminal law was Texas in 1994, followed by Illinois in 2021 and New Jersey in 2022. However, 23 states still have HIV-specific criminal laws on the books.

Under President Joe Biden, the Department of Justice (DOJ) took aim at HIV criminal laws, suing Tennessee over its law that made exposing someone to HIV a felony and, at one time, required lifetime registration as a “violent sex offender.”

It was the DOJ’s contention at the time that the law violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by specifically targeting people living with HIV. 

The DOJ eventually reached a deal in May 2024 with Shelby County, Tennessee, which had the most charges filed under the law in the state, to stop prosecuting charges under the law. But a separate private suit brought by the LGBTQIA+ community center OUTMemphis against Tennessee’s governor and attorney general is still making its way through the court. 

The DOJ had also filed a landmark lawsuit against the state itself, but dropped the case in December 2024. 

Hicks of the CHLP said the wins in Maryland and North Dakota are a testament to the power of coalition building across the aisle, particularly in a time of hyperpartisanship and a culture of unbreakable political factions, at least at the federal level. Experts told Prism earlier this year that local organizing specifically around HIV criminal laws was going to be crucial without the federal government as a powerful partner.

Fair and Grueneich are eager to celebrate these legislative victories, especially, they said, given the past 10 months of nearly unceasing attacks on queer people in almost every segment of society, from health care to employment to education and even mere existence in public life.

But advocates also acknowledge that progress isn’t linear, and the movement still faces challenges alongside these landmark victories. One such challenge came earlier this year when a bipartisan pair of state legislators in Louisiana tried to pass a new bill that would have made intentional exposure of incurable sexually transmitted infections (STIs), such as hepatitis B, herpes simplex virus, human papillomavirus, and HIV, a felony in the state. 

The original version of the bill also called for lifelong electronic monitoring of those found guilty under the law.

The Louisiana Illuminator reported in May that the chief architect of the bill, Democratic state Rep. Patricia Moore, had introduced such legislation before but voluntarily deferred this version after outcry from activists and public health experts. She told the Illuminator that she plans to reintroduce a version of the bill in the future. 

Louisiana’s current HIV criminal statute is already among the harshest in the nation, and is one of only five that requires registration as a sex offender. At CHLP, Hicks said she and others are preparing for additional bills like Moore’s to crop up around the country.

“We’re really seeing decades of work being undone in a matter of months,” Hicks said. “I think there will be more states that attempt to introduce legislation aimed at broadening the criminalization of people living with STIs and other stigmatized health conditions.”

These landmark reforms and attempted rollbacks also come as the nation’s sprawling public health system is at the mercy of someone who has spread medical misinformation, including about HIV specifically. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. notoriously blamed the gay sex drug known as poppers for causing the AIDS virus, rather than the HIV virus that is scientifically proven to cause AIDS.

HIV/AIDS activists and lawmakers met in September and rallied to protest more than $3 billion in withheld funds from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a George W. Bush-era program credited with saving more than 26 million lives around the globe. 

Efforts to withhold these lifesaving funds, already appropriated by Congress, come after the Trump administration’s January decision to pause foreign aid threw the global fight against HIV/AIDS into chaos. 

Republican legislators in July also made the rare move to rebuke a Trump request to cut $400 million from PEPFAR. The New York Times reported around that same time, citing internal documents, that the Trump administration plans to significantly scale back the program, shifting countries away from U.S. assistance. 

But amid the threat of so much regression, Hicks said that she and others are just focusing on the victories as they come, big or small, and taking lessons to the fights ahead.

“I think we definitely have a battle, an uphill battle, but I really think we’re bringing out all the tools we can to fight back.”

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor