So here is what I found over on clamav-users list... Someone suggested calling clamdscan with --fdpass. When I do that, I can run clamdscan as a normal user and get a result.
[me@zzzz ~]$ clamdscan -c /etc/clamd.d/scan.conf eicar.txt /home/me/eicar.txt: lstat() failed: Permission denied. ERROR ----------- SCAN SUMMARY ----------- Infected files: 0 Total errors: 1 Time: 0.001 sec (0 m 0 s) [me@zzzz ~]$ clamdscan -c /etc/clamd.d/scan.conf --fdpass eicar.txt /home/me/eicar.txt: Eicar-Test-Signature FOUND ----------- SCAN SUMMARY ----------- Infected files: 1 Time: 0.001 sec (0 m 0 s)
