THE Supreme Court has ruled that it is illegal to fire or dismiss an employee for being afflicted with the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV.
In a 14-page decision promulgated on February 14, 2024 but made public only recently, the High Court’s Third Division through Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin found the dismissal of worker AAA, an alias, as an overseas Filipino worker invalid for being discriminatory.
Records of the case showed that in October 2017, AAA was deployed to Saudi Arabia as a cleaning worker under a two-year contract with a monthly salary of 1, 500 Saudi riyals through the recruitment agency Bison Management Corporation.
In January 2019, after working for 15 months, AAA underwent a routine medical exam and was found positive for HIV.
This prompted AAA’s foreign employer to terminate his employment, citing Saudi Arabian laws that consider an HIV-positive individual unfit to work.
AAA was repatriated to Manila in February 2019.
Upon his return, AAA filed a complaint for illegal dismissal against his Saudi employer and his recruitment agency and foreign partner. The case was dismissed by the labor arbiter.
However, the National Labor Relations Commission reversed the labor arbiter’s decision and found Bison, its president, and its foreign recruitment agency Saraja Al Jazirah Contracting Establishment, liable for illegal dismissal.
The NLRC ruling was affirmed by the Court of Appeals, with the latter saying that it did not find any abuse of discretion, much less grave, on the part of the NLRC as its ruling was in accordance with pertinent labor laws and jurisprudence.
The appellate court also stressed that it agreed with the NLRC that Philippine law governs the terms of the employment contract as well as the right of workers employed abroad.
It also cited Section 35 of Republic Act 8504 which prohibits discrimination in any form from pre-employment to post-employment based on the actual, perceived or suspected HIV status of an individual.
This prompted Bison to elevate the case to the SC.
But the SC also sided with AAA, saying that he was “illegally dismissed” and thus entitled to salaries for the unexpired portion of his employment contract and moral and exemplary damages, among others.
The High Court cited RA 11166 or the Philippine HIV and AIDS Policy Act which states that it is unlawful for employees to be terminated from work on the sole basis of their HIV status.
Since Philippine law prohibits the use of a person’s HIV-positive condition as a ground for dismissal, there was no valid cause to terminate AAA, the High Court added.
“The CA correctly ruled that since Philippine laws categorically prohibit the use of a person’s HIV condition as a ground for dismissal, the inescapable conclusion is that there was no valid cause to terminate AAA, and that doing so is tantamount to illegal dismissal,” the SC said.
“While it is true that disease may be a ground for termination under Article 299 of the Labor Code, as amended and renumbered, Bison has conceded that being HIV positive is not yet an illness or disease,” it added.
The SC also stressed that even if it is proven that Saudi Arabian law prohibits the employment of workers who test positive for HIV, RA 11166 takes precedence over it for being against a Philippine law.
“Even if it were truly ‘undeniable’ and it is ‘all over the internet’ that Saudi Arabia does not allow persons who test positive for HIV to work there, as Bison claims, the Court had already settled in Pakistan Airlines International Corporation vs Ople that if the foreign law stipulated is contrary to law, morals, good customs, public order, or public policy, then Philippine law shall apply,” the SC said.
It added that contractual stipulation “is not a bar” to applicability of Philippine laws.
Concurring with the decision are Associate Justices Henri Jean Paul Inting, Japar Dimaampao and Samuel Gaerlan.
