High Court Upholds Law on AIDS Transmission

The Iowa Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a state law making it a crime to knowingly put a sexual partner at risk for contracting HIV without warning. The court rejected a challenge arguing the law was vague about what was prohibited. The ruling came in a Dubuque County case in which Justin Auman Keene was charged with criminally transmitting HIV through unprotected sex with a woman identified only by her initials in court documents.

Keene argued that the law was unclear and said there was no evidence he had infected his sexual partner with the virus. He also claimed he did not ejaculate during the sexual encounter. The high court rejected all the arguments, saying the law simply banned conduct which put another person at risk of contracting the disease.

"The person exposed to the HIV need not become infected with the virus in order for the infected person to be prosecuted under this section," the court said. The law bans "the intentional exposure of the body of one person to a bodily fluid of another person in a manner that could result in the transmission of the HIV." The court said a person infected with HIV can be prosecuted under the law for having unprotected sex without informing a sexual partner about the disease, and that was the case with Keene.

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