In September 1996, Jacques Hoffmann applied for employment as a cabin attendant with South African Airways (SAA), the national airline.

It advanced several reasons for this, based primarily on the requirement that flight crew had to be fit for worldwide duty – and therefore should be able to take the yellow fever vaccine without an adverse reaction, for example, and should not be prone to contracting opportunistic diseases.

The Witwatersrand Local Division denied his application, finding that SAA's practice was "based on considerations of medical, safety and operational grounds" and "aimed at achieving a worthy and important societal goal".

Hoffman appealed to the Constitutional Court of South Africa, where he was represented by Wim Trengove, instructed by the Legal Resources Centre.

[4][5] Writing on behalf of a unanimous court, Justice Sandile Ngcobo found that SAA's employment practice was not justified on any medical or commercial grounds.

In this regard, SAA's own medical examination of Hoffmann had found nothing "to indicate that the infection has reached either the asymptomatic immunosuppressed state or the AIDS stage".