ACLU sues to save benefits

DETROIT – The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan announced Monday that they were filing suit in state court to settle the issue of whether the passage of Proposal 2, the anti-gay marriage amendment to Michigan's constitution, has any affect on domestic partnership benefits currently offered to state employees. Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox issued an opinion last week that DP benefits offered to same-sex couples in municipalities across the state cannot be renewed in new contacts. "The bottom line is that the law is what the law is," Cox said. "This is the logical outcome of what the voters approved."
The ACLU says that's not so, and that Cox's opinion is in error and disregards case law on the matter from across the country.
"Although the state of Michigan courts have not addressed this issue, the courts of the country have uniformly and consistently held that providing health insurance benefits to domestic partners does not create a marriage or similar union or relationship," said staff attorney Jay Kaplan at a Monday morning press conference that took place at the ACLU's Detroit office. "Those cases were conspicuously absent in the attorney general's opinion last week."
Further, Kaplan argues that health benefits cannot be equated to marital status because such benefits are not, in fact, a rite of marriage.
"There are many people who are legally married who aren't entitled to health insurance," he said. "It's something that an employer voluntarily provides. It's not that same thing."
Kaplan helped write the actual complaint, which concisely outlines this and other points.
"When a government employer provides health insurance to its employees' domestic partners and children, it is simply providing a benefit that is essential to attract and retain good employees," the complaint reads. "If there is any ambiguity about the reach of the marriage amendment, this court must look at the intent of the voters. The voters of Michigan, in approving the marriage amendment, were not motivated by any malevolent desire to strip families of health insurance or job benefits. The ballot committee that sponsored Proposal 2 consistently and repeatedly assured voters that 'Proposal 2 is only about marriage.'"
To support this claim, the ACLU included as exhibit one in their complaint campaign materials distributed by Citizens for the Protection of Marriage, the group that led the successful petition drive that placed Proposal 2 on the ballot. "Proposal 2 is only about marriage," reads one such piece of campaign literature. "Marriage is a union between a husband and wife. Proposal 2 will keep it that way. This is not about rights or benefits or how people choose to live their life."
But if Cox and his cohorts have their way, the lives of many Michiganders, including the 21 couples the ACLU is representing, will be greatly affected.
Plaintiffs Dennis and Tom Patrick have three adopted sons and, currently, two foster sons, all under the age of 10. Dennis is a professor at Eastern Michigan University while Tom works part-time as a math teacher. All of the Patricks' boys are mentally or developmentally challenged and one of them, Joshua, has a seizure disorder.
"He has been hospitalized a half a dozen times in the four years that he's been with us, one time in intensive care, plus a number of trips to the emergency room," said Dennis at the press conference. "As you imagine, he hates the hospital and so what my partner Tom and I try to do is make sure that one of us is with him 24 hours a day in the hospital rooms so that he's never alone."
But Dennis and Tom couldn't provide such attentive and considerate care if they both had to work full-time. And they'd have to if Tom suddenly lost his health insurance. The large family operates on a budget, and there's no room on it to pay for out-of-pocket for health insurance for Tom.
Plaintiff Jerome Post is Kalamazoo's Labor Specialist. His partner of 14 years, Paul Renwick, is semi-retired.
"He is in need of these health insurance benefits," said Post. "As a matter of fact, he was recently hospitalized for a condition that we still don't know what the problem was. There was no serious diagnosis. The loss of these benefits is going to be a severe economic and financial distress on our family."
To plaintiff Peter Hammer, a law professor at Wayne State University, the possible loss of benefits is about more than just economic hardship, it's about discrimination and a loss of dignity.
"The attorney general seeks to deprive me of the very economic rights that permit me to provide essential health care benefits to my family," he said. "This is not just wrong; it is shameful. To deny such rights in the name of the constitution is to bastardize the very meaning of that term."
All of the 21 couples named in the lawsuit currently rely on DP benefits for health care coverage. Six of the couples have dependent children; three have relocated to Michigan because their employer offered DP benefits and several specifically chose their place of employment on the basis of those benefits. Those named include teachers, a forensic psychologist, a social worker, mental health therapists and even a city treasurer.
"We are filing this lawsuit today on behalf of the many men and women in Michigan with children who very much need health care but who stand to lose their benefits because supporters of Proposal 2 are pushing to make LGBT families into second-class citizens," said Kary Moss, ACLU-Michigan's executive director. "When supporters of Proposal 2 were campaigning they assured the public that [the proposal] would only affect the right to marry. However, since Proposal 2 passed its supporters have tried to expand it to discriminate against gay and lesbian families."
On hand at the press conference alongside the battalion of attorneys working the case were Leslie Thompson, executive director of Affirmations Lesbian and Gay Community Center, and Triangle Foundation Executive Director Jeffrey Montgomery.
"Attorney General Cox was wrong last week," Montgomery said. "The campaign managers who promoted Proposal 2 were not honest, and the voters were not fully informed – in fact they were intentionally misled. This action today is taken to help dissipate the cloud that has hung over Michigan and the implications of a bad electoral result."