Opinion ID: 220365
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: BACKGROUND The Leadership Act

Text: In 2003, Congress passed the Leadership Act to strengthen and enhance United States leadership and the effectiveness of the United States response to the HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria pandemics. 22 U.S.C. § 7603 (Supp. III 2009). [1] The Act designates several avenues through which this international campaign is to be run, including 5-year, global strategies; the development of vaccines and treatments; and public-private partnerships between federal agencies and NGOs, which Congress recognized have proven effective in combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic. §§ 7601(18), 7603. The Act reflects Congress's concern with the social, cultural, and behavioral causes of HIV/AIDS. See § 7601(15). Section 7601(23), one of forty-one congressional findings set forth in § 7601, addresses prostitution: Prostitution and other sexual victimization are degrading to women and children and it should be the policy of the United States to eradicate such practices. The sex industry, the trafficking of individuals into such industry, and sexual violence are additional causes of and factors in the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Congress imposed two prostitution-related conditions on Leadership Act funding. First, it specified that no funds made available to carry out the Act may be used to promote or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution or sex trafficking. § 7631(e). Second, it imposed a Policy Requirement, which specifies that: No funds made available to carry out this Act ... may be used to provide assistance to any group or organization that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking, except that this subsection shall not apply to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the World Health Organization, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative or to any United Nations agency. § 7631(f). This litigation involves only the Policy Requirement. Plaintiffs do not challenge the Requirement's sex trafficking component.