Yesterday six state employees
sued the state of Wisconsin with the help of the
ACLU seeking heatlh insurance benefits for their domestic partners.
All six are lesbian women in commited, long-term relationships. At least one couple had their commitment ceremony as long ago as 1992. I've read the complaint (which you can download from the ACLU) and it seems solid.
Details and background below the fold.
The lawsuit seeks relief based on Article I, Section 1 of the state constitution which says:
Equality; inherent rights. Section 1. All people are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; to secure these rights, governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Part of the lawsuit says this:
174. Under the statutes and regulations governing employee benefits set forth above, or, in the alternative under defendants' interpretation and administration of applicable state statutes and regulations, defendants provide health insurance, sick leave carryover benefits, and family leave benefits to married employees to provide for their spouses, but deny those benefits to similarly-situated state employees in committed intimate same-sex relationships to provide to, or use to care for, their life partners.
- A lesbian or gay male employee is, therefore, treated less favorably than is a heterosexual employee.
- A female employee with a female partner is treated less favorably than is a male employee with a female partner with the respect to health insurance, sick leave carryover benefits, and family leave. Similarly, a male employee with a male partner is treated less favorably than a female employee with a male partner with respect to the receipt of those same benefits.
- The governing Wisconsin statutes and regulations, or, in the alternative, defendants, through their interpretation and administration of those statutes and regulations, deprive plaintiffs of the right to equal protection under Article I, sec. 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution by denying these employment benefits to lesbian and gay male employees with same-sex domestic partners, because of their sexual orientation, sex and marital status.
A similar case in 1992 went against a lesbian employee and her partner because state law defines "dependent" for purposes of state employee health insurance and family leave as a spouse or child, and another state law defines marriage as "husband and wife." So domestic partners of state employees can't get benefits unless they're married, and they can't get married because they're gay.
At least one of the plaintiffs is an employee of the University of Wisconsin, which is now the only Big Ten school that doesn't offer domestic partner benefits. The UW Board of Regents is one of the defendants, which is interesting because they actually proposed offering domestic partner benefits in each of their last two budgets, and were only stopped by the state legislature. That's collosally stupid because UW is trying hard to attract the best faculty in the world, and can't always offer the tip-top salary package. Offering domestic partnership benefits doesn't just attract gay PhDs. It's a sign that the univsersity is a progressive, open-minded place - the kind of place smart people want to go. And just last month, three faculty members left the university over this issue.
Lots of private employers in Wisconsin offer domestic partner benefits. The average increase in cost is less than one percent.
All of this is taking place in the midst of a legislative effort to amend the state constitution to ban marriage and anything "subtantially similar to marriage" for same-sex couples. It's passed once already and has to pass one more time before it goes to referendum.
Several historical examples - most notably, Cincinatti's Title XIII debacle - show that codifying discrimination against gays has immediate negative economic development implications. There's more on that in an article I wrote in my day job a few months ago.
The interesting thing about the lawsuit is that at least some of the people being sued - the Board of Regents - are in favor of giving domestic partner benefits, and I have a suspicion that the others named in the suit (two cabinet secretaries) are in favor of it, too. So it's just the legislature that'll fight it. Even the Attorney General is a good liberal who will probably put up a fight because it's her job, not because her heart is in it.