Former Privacy Advocate AHF Wants to Break HIPAA Protections

LOS ANGELES—With questions still swirling around the amount of money so-called "non-profit" AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has spent over the past four years on political advocacy, the organization is not only planning to spend even more money in its attempt to defend mandatory condom law Measure B (which even Los Angeles County itself doesn't feel is worth defense), it's now trying to defend its proposed violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) medical privacy laws—laws which it once sued the adult industry's AIM Healthcare Foundation over for allegedly violating the medical privacy of former performer Elli Foxx. The lawsuit was part of the reason that AIM was forced out of business after more than 15 years of serving the adult community. Although AHF has no legal standing to pursue its defense of Measure B, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Hollingsworth v. Perry, its attorneys have nonetheless issued subpoenas to the two major industry STD testing facilities and one treatment clinic, seeking disclosure of the number of STD tests performed by the clinics, and the results of those tests—and in a Wednesday press release, AHF whined about how the industry has sought to protect the medical privacy of its personnel—privacy which AHF once considered sacrosanct! "However, now, after AHF, as an intervenor in the case, sought data from adult industry testing programs—the numbers of HIV and STDs tests done, subsequent test results, but NO personal information or identifying data—through the legal process of discovery, the adult industry has been crying wolf over privacy rather than defend its testing program, with producers and industry backers falsely alleging a potential for HIPAA violations of performers personal information," AHF's press release reads in part. The release goes on to claim that because AHF is not seeking the identities of the performers tested by the subpoenaed clinics that "HIPAA is not an issue here." However, considering that in the past, AHF employees have tracked adult performers to their homes and places of work in an effort to enlist their help in promoting mandatory condoms/barrier protections, the organization's protests that it isn't interested in the test subjects' identities must be viewed skeptically. Moreover, the adult industry is under no obligation to help AHF defend Measure B, even aside from the organization's lack of standing to do so. Vivid Entertainment's lawsuit against the law includes many facets, primary of which is that the Measure requires adult producers who wish to shoot hardcore content to pay to obtain a "health permit" from Los Angeles County in order to do so, in violation of their First Amendment rights to free sexual speech. The Measure also appears to invest the County with investigatory and enforcement powers which more properly belong to Cal/OSHA—and might even land an adult producer in prison. "Steve Hirsch and the industry can’t have it both ways: you can’t sue to block the law and also be unwilling to prove your case as to why condoms should not be required," AHF president Michael Weinstein, who aims to be California's "porn czar," charged. "The ‘privacy’ fig leaf here is hiding critical STD data." But that's not the point: If Vivid wants to use performer test data to prove its case, it may attempt to do so, and the industry at large may or may not cooperate with that attempt. However, the industry is under no obligation to help AHF defend the law, which AHF apparently thinks testing data will help it to accomplish—and in the process, of course, AHF continues to smear the efforts the industry has made to keep its performers healthy—an effort that has prevented any HIV transmission on an adult set in California for more than 10 years.