Court: Arizona same-sex partners entitled to benefits

[kpete]

Source: Arizona Republic

Court: Arizona same-sex partners entitled to benefits


The Arizona Republic

Arizona must continue to provide health-care benefits to the partners of gay and lesbian government workers, at least for the time being.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld an injunction that blocked a 2009 state law from taking effect. That law would have eliminated health-insurance coverage for the same-sex partners of state workers.

In issuing its ruling Tuesday, the appellate court ruled that denying the benefits would violate the equal protection provisions of the U.S. Constitution.


"Today's decision by the Ninth Circuit means Arizona's lesbian and gay state employees will not suddenly find themselves without vital family health coverage," said Tara Borelli, a staff attorney with Lambda Legal, a New York-based advocacy group that filed the lawsuit on behalf of seven state employees. "Our clients are simply seeking equal pay for equal work."





Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2011/09/06/20110906arizona-same-sex-partners-benefits-ruling.html#ixzz1XDctrCki

[midnight]

1. K&R

[Oceansaway]

2. K&R...n/t

[southmost]

3. good news for now

in the meantime

[Auntie Bush]

4. The only thing that has saved AZ from a trash bin is their court system.

Their lawmakers are a bunch of far right wing AH's! :puke:

[No Elephants]

26. U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a federal court, not an Arizona court.

Maybe Arizona courts are good. I don't know one way or the other, but Arizona courts don't get credit for this decisision.

[SoapBox]

5. Can you just imagine how many GOPBagger heads are exploding?

Hilarious.

Good news for us and I hope it ruins the T.HaterBaggers day!

[No Elephants]

29. +1

[Honeycombe8]

6. Serious question: How does the govt know they're not just roommates?

Seriously. I mean, does Arizona have a civil union law, so that gays/lesbians can join civilly? If not, then how do they know the people don't just claim health ins. for a roommate?

[closeupready]

7. Video footage?

Who knows. K&R

[Zorra]

8. The criteria is probably the same for non-same sex domestic partnerships also.

The same question you asked could be applied to those domestic partnerships in which one partner haz a penis, and the other partner has a vagina.

How do they know they're not roomates?

[Honeycombe8]

11. They have a marriage license. nt

[Zorra]

15. Really? nt

[Honeycombe8]

18. I guess no one knows the answer? My health ins. carrier covers...

spouses and families; I think you have to be married. So I don't know how "partner" coverage works. All contracts have requirements that you must meet, so I was thinking there must be some requirement for establishing a "partner," when it's not a spouse. Maybe it's just a sworn statement you sign or something. I was just curious.

[closeupready]

19. In the 90's before sodomy laws were struck down, it was very common for

progressive-minded companies in New York that IF you requested coverage for a domestic partner, you'd need to be registered as such with city authorities. So it was not necessary that the state recognize the partnership.

Obviously, since this is the state of Arizona as the employer, all kinds of different ways that different requirements would come into play, but just wanted to throw that bit of info out there.

[No Elephants]

28. Point is, whatever is done for mixed gender partners has to be done for same gender partners.

And no, not all mixed gender partners have a marriage license.

[NOMOREDRUGWAR]

14. You're exactly right

And as I mentioned in my posts, people that have the opportunity to marry should be punished severely if it is found they are abusing the system and letting someone with whom they are uninvolved on their insurance policy. If we have straight people engaging in "Chuck and Larry" type situations then they should be punished. Unfortunately, most states don't allow civil unions or marriages for gay couples, and so this domestic protection is the only protection that they have. Still, most of the abusers of such a system are probably straight, simply because most people are straight.

The fix is to allow gay marriage in every state. First, you have to wait for the old people who oppose gay marriage to die. It's a very generational issue.

[Zorra]

16. "The fix is to allow gay marriage in every state"

Yep, it's a very simple common sense legal solution, isn't it?

[NOMOREDRUGWAR]

17. Not to fundies who spend hours every day thinking

about gay people.

[iverglas]

22. not really ...

I know my views and experience are strange and foreign, but ...

As a Canadian resident and taxpayer, I claim my partner as a dependant when I file my tax return. (He doesn't work these days, don't ask me why.) When he was employed, I was covered by his supplemental group insurance. (I'm self-employed so otherwise we pay for prescriptions, dental and eyeglasses and such out of pocket.) We are heterosexual and middle-aged, we have lived together some 12 years, we aren't married and we have not the slightest desire to be married.

Frankly, as a woman, I long felt betrayed by gay men and their militancy about marriage, which I have always regarded as an institution of patriarchy to be rejected, not embraced. But being committed as I am to equality rights, I absolutely supported their demands. Hell, I cancelled my burger order from the church group fundraising outside my grocery store, ravenous though I was, after I enquired whether the church would be performing same-sex marriages now that their legality was recognized and was told "no". ;)

Not everyone wishes to be married. We, for instance, are both atheists and therefore have none of the religious motivations that still drive many people to marry. And we are as perplexed by the institution (in the legal sense) of marriage as we are by religion.

Nonetheless we have accepted responsibilities to each other by cohabiting and those responsibilities are recognized by the state. (We could provide for those responsibilities in a private cohabitation agreement but have not bothered.) I am taxed as a person with an adult dependant, I will be eligible for survivor benefits under the public pension plan if he predeceases me, we have the same inheritance rights and support rights as if we were married, etc. (The only real distinction is that neither of us acquires ownership rights in our residence if one party owns it.) And no distinction is made between same-sex and opposite-sex couples, whether married or unmarried, in any of those regards.

We are treated as spouses by absolutely every public and private program that covers spouses. Just as gay and lesbian couples in our situation are, and have been for many years, including before same-sex marriage was recognized as legal here several years ago.

Why would the question of fraudulent "couples" be any different from any other kind of fraud perpetrated on benefits programs or in tax returns, for instance? Obviously, in order to qualify, people must make formal statements that they declare to be true, and making false statements in order to obtain a benefit would be a criminal offence. If they declare that they are a party to a domestic partnership in which they have financial responsibilities to the other partner, then surely that is no more dangerous a statement to rely on than a statement about anything else that might determine eligibility.

Of course same-sex marriages should be legally recognized.

But why non-marriage partnerships of either type should not generate the same benefits as marriage partnerships, and why progressive people would not call for that ... I don't get it.


For anyone interested, 2006 Canadian census data on the marital status of couples in Canada:

same-sex couples
http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97-553/p4-eng.cfm
"The number of same-sex couples surged 32.6% between 2001 and 2006, five times the pace of opposite-sex couples (+5.9%). For the first time, the census counted same-sex married couples, reflecting the legalization of same-sex marriages for all of Canada as of July 2005. In total, the census enumerated 45,345 same-sex couples, of which 7,465, or 16.5%, were married couples."

http://www42.statcan.ca/smr08/smr08_118-eng.htm
"Gay pride... by the numbers"

generally
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/070912/dq070912a-eng.htm
"Consequently, married-couple families accounted for 68.6% of all census families in 2006, down from 70.5% five years earlier. The proportion of common-law-couple families rose from 13.8% to 15.5%, while the share of lone-parent families increased slightly from 15.7% to 15.9%. Two decades ago, common-law-couple families accounted for only 7.2% of all census families. Married-couple families represented 80.2%, and lone-parent families, 12.7%."

1 in 7 couples in Canada in 2006 had chosen not to marry -- and in Quebec it was nearly 1 in 2!

[No Elephants]

31. Maybe people are militant about equal rights, rather than about marriage, per se.

The minute the goverment says "this group of people and this one only is not entitled to do x, y or z," government is making that group second class citizens. I'd be militant about having my government identify me as a second class citizen, whether it was marriage or serving on a jury, neither of which I have the least desire to do.

[JusticeForAll]

25. Just curious

Why do you feel giving healthcare benefits to a person of choice should be considered an abuse of the system and why is it so bad that it should be punished severely?

Why should only married people be entitled to such a benefit?

Is that not discriminatory toward single people who might want to give their coverage to a brother or a sister or parent who lives with them?


For what it's worth - I'm gay, I'm married (in a "straight" marriage), and I'm partnered. I think single people are unfairly discriminated against.

[No Elephants]

27. The most liberal people I know arae the ones who fought the civil rights battles on race in the

Fifties and Sixties and demonstrated for withdrawal from Vietnam

Individual results may vary.

[NOMOREDRUGWAR]

12. This is one of the problems in states that lack civil unions

or marriage rights for gay couples. If you have a civil union or marriage with someone and it is fraudulent then you can be prosecuted, but without these civil rights protections in place, people are going to abuse the system and you can get "Chuck and Larry" type situations with straight people abusing it. All the more reason to have gay marriage in every state so that situations like this are a non-issue.

[LeftyMom]

23. How do they know opposite sex couples are legitimately attached and not just

fakin' it for the benefits? They don't.

Other than situation comedies, how often does that actually happen? Is it worth inconveniencing sincere people to prevent?

[Betty88]

30. Probably have to do like I did years ago at my job

I had to fill out a form and get it notarized it basically said that we lived and together and shared our resources. I don't remember the exact wording but they did not except our domestic partnership cert I guess because at that time it was uncommon. But once I had that filled out my partner was put on my health plan and has been on it now for over 12 years.

[me b zola]

9. K&R

[lonestarnot]

10. K & R! Who dat judge?

[NOMOREDRUGWAR]

13. Of course it violates the Constitution -- gays and lesbians are full citizens, and pay taxes

just like the rest of us. Because they are full citizens, they are entitled to have health-care benefits provided to their partner. Because Arizona lacks a civil union/gay marriage statute as someone else said, I'd allow each person to have one new partner for health-insurance purposes every 2 years, to crack down on system abuse by straight people.

[William769]

20. Court Returns Partner Benefits to Arizona State Workers

Source: The Advocate

In a slap to Gov. Jan Brewer, an appeals court Tuesday ordered Arizona to continue providing health care benefits to the same-sex partners of state employees.

Brewer, a conservative Republican, signed a bill in September 2009 that took away the benefits; former governor Janet Napolitano granted the benefits through an executive order.

In their 13-page opinion, the three-member appeals panel in Phoenix said stripping the benefits would be counter to the constitutional right to equal protection.

While Lambda Legal, which argued the case, hailed the decision, Brewer's office was unsurprisingly displeased.



Read more: http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/09/07/Court_Returns_Partner_Benefits_to_Arizona_State_Workers/

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http://www.estergoldberg.com/.a/6a0105349ca980970c0153916000b1970b-popup

[sakabatou]

21. Brewer needs to be voted out of office asap

[lonestarnot]

24. 3 Judge panel. Who were they? Anyone know?