Mexico rules on HIV in military

The court said the law was unconstitutional

Mexico's highest court has ruled that the country's military cannot order HIV-positive soldiers to leave the armed forces.

The Supreme Court said a law requiring soldiers with the condition to leave was unconstitutional.

The case was brought by 11 members of the military. Some 300 HIV-positive people have been fired over past years.

Four of those who brought the case have been ordered to be reinstated by the department of defence.

'Unconstitutional'

The military had argued that the infected officers were "useless" but was told that it could only expel those who were medically unfit to perform their duty or who had full-blown Aids.

The court said that a law requiring naval officers and soldiers with the condition to leave the military violated individual's constitutional rights.

"Everyone who viewed this law as unconstitutional has shown that it violates the rules of equality," the court's president Guillermo Ortiz Mayagoitia, said during the proceedings.

The case came before the court after several soldiers appealed the decision by the department of defence to be suspended from duty after they tested positive for the virus.