As of December 8, 1986, 394 children under the age of 13 were reported by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to have AIDS. Most of the cases resulted from perinatal transmission of the virus from infected mothers linked to drug abuse. Thirteen percent of the cases resulted from blood transfusions. A major social and legal issue associated with AIDS in children is their right to a free public education and the risks of transmission in the school setting. The CDC guidelines for the education of children with AIDS indicates that most children with AIDS pose no risk to others in the typically casual contacts of the school setting but that each case should be evaluated by a multidisciplinary team. Problematic aspects of the guidelines are the absence of a mechanism for determining which children to review, the lack of guidelines for confidentiality, the logistics of the recommended screening of all high-risk infants, and failure to address the possibility of sexual transmission of the virus among school children. A review of specific court cases involving children with AIDS in New York State, New Jersey, and Indiana focuses on decisionmaking authority, constitutional issues, and the Federal 1973 Rehabilitation Act; statutory issues and the Education of the Handicapped Act; and administrative law issues.