Domestic Partnership News Archive
January 07 - January 13, 2001

Friday, January 12, 2001

Ohio University employees pushing for domestic partner benefits

A story published today in The Post, a campus newspaper, reports that although Ohio University employees currently cannot receive domestic partner benefits, some campus groups are attempting to gain support for the issue.

Professor Don Adleta said he hopes a meeting with Ohio University President Robert Glidden brought OU employees one step closer to receiving benefits for their live-in, unmarried partners.

Adleta, who was elected president of the Ohio Domestic Partner Benefits Task Force in April, met with Glidden
Nov. 20.

"It's tiring. There's no light at the end of the tunnel," Adleta said, prior to the meeting. "The fact is that people are
leaving because of no (domestic partner) benefits."

At the meeting, Glidden approved a letter for the task force to send to the Inter-University Council of Ohio, an association of Ohio's 13 public universities and two freestanding medical colleges.

"He saw that it's a logical step for us," Adleta said. "The question now is, when will it come up at the
Inter-University Council of Presidents?"

The letter offers assistance to the council on behalf of the task force, a 3-year-old statewide organization comprising 19 representatives from 11 other universities in addition to five representatives from OU. It is a subgroup of OU's Gay Lesbian or Bisexual Employees organization.

"It's just a slow process," Adleta said.

But he said he believes Glidden's attention to diversity might help.

At OU, Glidden already has introduced the issue to the university's Board of Trustees, who have the final decision about offering the benefits at OU.

And a diversity team has visited OU's campus, OU Faculty Senate chairman Gary Pfeiffer said. The team will return at the end of the month to put together a plan that will update OU's policy on sexual orientation in addition to disabilities, gender and age.

"That sort of discussion I intend to take part in," Pfeiffer said. "The senate has tried real hard on this."

Adleta said Glidden's efforts are encouraging.

"That indicates a lot of support for such a venture," Adleta said. "This is a move in a good direction."

In a June 2, 2000 Post article, Glidden said he wants to raise the profile of domestic partner benefits to advance their possibility.

And support is coming from other directions as well.

The Ohio Faculty Council, a statewide organization of faculty senate members, issued a statement to the Ohio Board of Regents and the IUC Feb. 11, said Pfeiffer, a representative on the OFC. The council expressed support of domestic partner benefits last year.

Ohio state legislation does not allow domestic partner benefits, said Greg Fialko, OU director of benefits.

"I hope that Glidden will join forces with other universities," Adleta said.

Thursday, January 11, 2001

New York's highest court agrees to hear same-sex housing case

A story published today in the New York Blade reports that the New York Court of Appeals has agreed to hear an appeal challenging Yeshiva University's exclusion of unmarried couples from its family housing units.

The lawsuit is the first in the nation challenging anti-gay policies in university housing,

"This is very significant. Many people thought the Court of Appeals wouldn't hear it because the lower court so quickly and decisively closed the door on the case," says Eric Ferrero of the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project.

The ACLU is the lead counsel representing students in Levin v. Yeshiva University and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine who have been denied couples' housing. The plaintiffs include two female students and the gay student organization at Einstein. A date for the oral arguments is expected to be announced soon.

The story says that the Court of Appeals announced Nov. 30 it would hear the case, which centers on New York City's Yeshiva University, which blocks same-sex couples from its shared housing units because those couples are not married. The ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project is representing graduate students at Yeshiva's Bronx-based Albert Einstein College of Medicine who were denied shared housing with their same-sex partners because they cannot marry.

The ACLU is arguing that the school's policy amounts to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and marital status, both of which are illegal under the New York City Administrative Code. In addition, the state bans housing discrimination based on marital status.

Ferrero told the Blade that the case marks the first time a school housing policy that bars same-sex couples has been tested in court. He says many similar institutions have voluntarily extended housing to the partners of their students, often due to political or legal pressure.

"But this is a situation where both sides are in [the legal battle] for the long haul," he assesses.

In September, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed a brief asking the Court of Appeals to hear the ACLU's suit. The action was in conjunction with the ACLU's filing of a petition asking the state's high court to review the lower court's decision that dismissed the case. In that decision, the New York Supreme Court ruled that Yeshiva's housing policy is not discriminatory because "it had the same impact on non-married, heterosexual students as it had on non-married homosexual students."

In his brief, Spitzer asked the Court of Appeals to hear the case because of the impact the lower court's ruling could have on his office's ability to fight for civil rights for a range of people - including people of color, women and disabled people.

According to the ACLU, Spitzer's involvement focused on a New York City law barring discrimination that has a "disparate impact," or particular hardship, on groups protected by civil rights laws.

Saturday, January 9, 2001

Unmarried couples face economic discrimination in California

A story published today in the Long Beach Press Telegram discusses various types of financial discrimination experienced by unmarried couples in California.

The story begins by focusing on a same-sex couple living in Signal Hill.

Ellen Ward, 63, is 11 years older than her partner, Pat Crosby.  And when Ward dies, the $2,500-a-month state pension she paid into for 32 years will dry up, leaving Crosby with nothing.

"You start looking at these things,'' says Ward, executive director of AIDS Walk Long Beach and a Signal Hill City Council candidate. "The older you get, the more you look at them.''

If they were married, Crosby would receive a quarter of Ward's pension and lifetime health benefits. But they're not. And they can't be. They're both women.

It's one of the ways in which gay and lesbian couples (and unmarried heterosexual couples) fare less well than their married counterparts.

The same is true for Long Beach city employees taking advantage of benefits for their domestic partners. They pay more for the coverage and are taxed for it, unlike married workers.

"We're going to get killed in taxes this year,'' says Peggy Chambers, a 50-year-old purchasing manager who works for the city of Long Beach. "Because the city is going to add what I pay to cover Katie to my income. "We're going to get taxed on that: $400 a month. We're going to take a hit on it.''

Chambers has been in a committed relationship with her partner Katie Parks, 49, for 14 years. Most of that time, because of their decision to raise six "AIDS babies,'' Katie has been unable to buy medical insurance. So they see the city's policy as a boon, despite the economic drawbacks.

"We won the battle, but we're not finished with the war yet,'' says Chambers.

The story points out that health care and retirement benefits are only the beginning. Domestic partners can still be kept out of medical decision-making, lose out in inheritance battles with a deceased partner's family and have a tougher time with real estate loans.

"I wasn't aware there were so many other benefits that married couples have that we don't have,'' says Chambers. "We don't get bereavement benefits like married couples. There's lots of things we still need to work on.''

That's why, for the second year in a row, Assemblywoman Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, has introduced a bill that would offer sweeping reforms in domestic partner law, giving unmarried couples who register as legal domestic partners some of the same economic and legal rights as married couples.  The registry is open to same-sex couples of any adult age.  Due to a quirk in the law forced on Migden by Governor Gray Davis, unmarried opposite-sex couples are eligible only if both parties are over 62 years of age.

Migden's Assembly Bill 25 would remove the state tax penalty that workers like Chambers pay for providing insurance for their partners. The state Legislature, of course, cannot do anything about federal taxes.

It would put domestic partners first in line to inherit each other's property, putting them ahead of other family members in much the same way a husband or wife is the presumed heir.

"You start worrying about these things when you're an older gay or lesbian couple,'' says Crosby, an office facilities manager at HealthNet, a firm that offers liberal benefits to domestic partners. But for them, the real plum benefit is Ward's California Public Employees Retirement System pension.

"It would be much nicer if I could be on her PERS,'' Crosby says. "If it was legal, then I would be able to get her retirement after her death.'' Migden hopes to amend the bill to provide just such survivor rights, LoFaso says.

Migden, chair of the Assembly Appropriations Committee, has the clout to get the bill through the Legislature, but it's unclear whether Davis will sign a bill even more ambitious than one he previously vetoed.

"The governor generally doesn't take positions on bills before they reach his desk,'' says Davis spokesman Roger Salazar.