Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is defending his years-old push to repeal a Michigan law that made it a felony for people who knew they had HIV to have sex without telling their partner, as he campaigns for one of the country’s most closely watched Senate seats.
El-Sayed, an epidemiologist who previously served as health director for Wayne County, is running against former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers to fill the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. The race is considered a must-win for Democrats hoping to reclaim the Senate majority.
The law in question, which dated to 1988, carried a prison sentence of up to four years for people who knew they were HIV-positive and had sexual penetration with a partner without first disclosing their status.
During his unsuccessful 2018 bid for Michigan governor, El-Sayed’s campaign website called for the state to “repeal HIV/AIDS criminalization laws and the exclusion of transgender Michiganders from state Medicaid.” He lost that primary to now-two-term Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who also backed changing the law at the time.
“You should not be criminalized for a disease. That is absolutely wrong. It’s hateful. It’s discriminatory, and we can, as a state, do better. You can count on me for that,” El-Sayed said in 2018.
Asked that year whether he supported decriminalizing HIV through legislation that would have created two levels of misdemeanors, El-Sayed said: “One of the big things that we have to recognize about HIV is that no disease can be illegal. The continuing forward of these laws on the books stigmatize people with the disease.”
The Legislature reformed the statute in early 2019. The revised law limited felony charges to vaginal and anal intercourse involving intent to transmit HIV or cases where transmission actually occurred, downgraded certain non-transmission offenses to misdemeanors, and shielded people whose HIV was medically suppressed from prosecution under the law’s reckless-disregard provision.
Campaign spokesperson Roxie Richner told Fox News Digital that El-Sayed backs the outcome of that overhaul. “Abdul supports the bipartisan reform bill that passed in 2019 through a Republican legislature that eliminated the discriminatory laws on the books,” Richner said. “As a public health professional, Abdul has fought to support programs that stem the spread of diseases, including HIV.”
Richner also pointed to federal policy under the current administration, saying it “has completely exacerbated this crisis by defunding the organizations and programs that do frontline care to prevent transmission and exposure in the first place. In the US Senate, Abdul will fight back against Donald Trump and RFK Jr’s attempts to dismantle our public health infrastructure and ensure all Americans have access to the care they need.”
El-Sayed has not walked back his earlier comments. Last week, after receiving an endorsement from the Human Rights Campaign, he said that if elected he would “fight to ensure every Michigander can live without discrimination and never have to wonder whether their rights will still be there tomorrow.”
El-Sayed narrowly defeated Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens in an August primary that highlighted divisions between the party’s establishment and progressive wings. If elected in November, he would become the first Muslim senator in U.S. history.
His campaign platform includes support for Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and sharp criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, which he has described as “genocide” against Palestinians.
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