The new law is a serious financial hit for Theresa Basset and Carol Kennedy and their family. (ACLU)
Saw this coming a mile away. Michigan recently
voted to yank the domestic partnership benefits of unmarried state employees.
Today in federal court the ACLU filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of four public union employees, claiming a violation of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, both due process and equal protection. From the filing (pdf):
Plaintiffs, Theresa Bassett, Carol Kennedy, Peter Ways, Joe Breakey, JoLinda Jach, Barbara Ramber, Doak Bloss, and Gerardo Ascheri (collectively “Plaintiffs”), seek declaratory and injunctive relief, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, from Public Act 297 of 2011, the Public Employee Domestic Partner Benefit Restriction Act, which violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution by stripping family health care benefits only from the committed same-sex domestic partners of certain gay and lesbian public employees within the State of Michigan while allowing public employees’ other family members access to such benefits, and by preventing public employers from offering such benefits to employees’ same sex domestic partners in the future. (Ex. A, 2011 Mich. Pub. Acts 297.)
Peter Ways and Joe Breakey and their daughter (ACLU)
From Metro Weekly:
The plaintiffs include Theresa Bassett, a middle school math teacher in Ann Arbor, and her wife, Carol Kennedy; Peter Ways, also a middle school teacher in Ann Arbor, and his partner, Joe Breakey; Doak Bloss, who works and the health equity and social justice coordinator for Ingham County, and his partner, Gerardo Ascheri; and JoLinda Jach, a systems analyst for the City of Kalamazoo, and her partner, Barbara Ramber, who has glaucoma and arthritis and "lost her health insurance coverage through the City of Kalamazoo as of January 1, 2012."
As the complaint in Bassett v. Snyder details, "The Public Employee Plaintiffs will lose family health insurance coverage for their committed domestic partners, and all of the Domestic Partner Plaintiffs will lose their present health insurance coverage, or have already lost their coverage."
From the
ACLU:
“It’s unconstitutional for the state of Michigan to deprive a small number of workers the means to take care of their loved ones when other similarly situated workers do have access to family coverage,” said Amanda C. Goad, staff attorney for the ACLU LGBT Project. “In an economic downturn, the state should be passing laws to make it easier for families to take care of each other, not to take protections away.”
This was easily foreseeable as the
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld a verdict that the state of Arizona could not do exactly the same thing.
Looks like Michigan Republicans just bought the state a bunch of new legal bills.
Thanks to the ACLU for fighting for families, while the "family values" party works to make their lives harder.