In Rare Move, China Court to Hear H.I.V. Case

BEIJING — In an apparent first for China’s legal system, a court in Anhui Province has agreed to hear a complaint by a prospective schoolteacher that he was illegally denied a job because he is H.I.V. positive, the man’s lawyer said Tuesday.

The unidentified man, said to be in his early 20s, brought the case under a 2006 national regulation that prohibits job discrimination against people with H.I.V., his lawyer, Zheng Jineng, said in a telephone interview from Hefei, the provincial capital.

Mr. Zheng said the case would be heard by a district court in Anqing. The plaintiff contends that he passed a written test and interviews for a teaching job there but that the city education bureau rejected him after a physical examination showed he was infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

“In the past on sensitive cases like this, the court would be very reluctant to accept the case,” Mr. Zheng said. “But this time they accepted it smoothly and quickly. That means the legal system in China is making progress.”

H.I.V.-positive Chinese suffered both official and public discrimination for years after the disease first surfaced there in 1986, as infected students were often forced to leave school and workers were shunted from their jobs.

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