Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 673.0

524US2

Unit: $U96

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BRAGDON v. ABBOTT

Opinion of the Court

ing Assistant Attorney General Lee, James A. Feldman,
Jessica Dunsay Silver, and Thomas E. Chandler.*

Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.
We address in this case the application of the Americans
with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), 104 Stat. 327, 42 U. S. C.
§ 12101 et seq., to persons infected with the human immuno-
deﬁciency virus (HIV). We granted certiorari to review,
ﬁrst, whether HIV infection is a disability under the ADA
when the infection has not yet progressed to the so-called
symptomatic phase; and, second, whether the Court of Ap-
peals, in afﬁrming a grant of summary judgment, cited sufﬁ-
cient material in the record to determine, as a matter of law,
that respondent’s infection with HIV posed no direct threat
to the health and safety of her treating dentist. 522 U. S.
991 (1997).

I

Respondent Sidney Abbott (hereinafter respondent) has
been infected with HIV since 1986. When the incidents we
recite occurred, her infection had not manifested its most
serious symptoms. On September 16, 1994, she went to the
ofﬁce of petitioner Randon Bragdon in Bangor, Maine, for a
dental appointment. She disclosed her HIV infection on the

*Ann Elizabeth Reesman ﬁled a brief for the Equal Employment Advi-

sory Council as amicus curiae urging reversal.

Briefs of amici curiae urging afﬁrmance were ﬁled for the City of Los
Angeles by James K. Hahn and David I. Schulman; for the AIDS Action
Council et al. by Chai R. Feldblum, Steven R. Shapiro, Matthew Coles,
and Robert A. Long, Jr.; for the American Medical Association by Carter
G. Phillips, Mark E. Haddad, Jack R. Bierig, Michael L. Ile, and Leonard
A. Nelson; for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation by Lynn
E. Cunningham; for the Infectious Diseases Society of America et al.
by Catherine A. Hanssens, Heather C. Sawyer, Beatrice Dohrn, Daniel
Bruner, Elizabeth A. Seaton, and Laura M. Flegel; and for Senator
Harkin et al. by Arlene Mayerson.

Peter M. Sﬁkas ﬁled a brief for the American Dental Association as

amicus curiae.