Council Will Seek to
Reinstate
Law Giving Partners Benefits
By SABRINA TAVERNISE, NYTimes on the Web, March 17, 2005
New York City -- A day after a defeat in court, City Council members said yesterday that they would continue their legal push for a law requiring companies that do business with New York City to extend the same benefits to employees' domestic partners that they provide to spouses.
The law, known as the Equal Benefits Law, has been vigorously opposed by the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, which said its adoption would increase costs for taxpayers by limiting the city's ability to choose low-cost bidders.
A panel of five judges from the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court, First Department, ruled unanimously on Tuesday to overturn a lower court decision that required Mr. Bloomberg to begin enforcing the law, which was passed last year.
The ruling capped months of bitter fighting, in which Mr. Bloomberg vetoed the law, the Council overrode his veto, and he filed suit.
The Council is planning to file an appeal with the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, within the next two weeks, said a lawyer representing it, Steven L. Holley.
It was not immediately clear whether the court, which accepts only a handful of cases out of hundreds that apply, would agree to take the case.
Mr. Holley said the court would be obliged to take the case because it involves the invalidation of a law.
A spokeswoman for the city's lawyers said the court would be unlikely to consider it.
"We are completely committed to appealing the court's decision and moving forward to make sure the equal benefits law gets implemented," said Councilwoman Christine C. Quinn, a Democrat who sponsored the bill and whose district includes Chelsea and the West Village.
"This won't be done until the final court of the state rules on it."
The law, which was supposed to take effect last fall, requires businesses with city contracts of more than $100,000 to provide health insurance, bereavement and other benefits to domestic partners if it provides them to spouses.
It was passed last spring and is similar to laws in San Francisco and Seattle.
The law in New York would have a broad impact on employees of private companies, because the city spends about $9 billion a year on goods, services and construction, said Councilman Robert Jackson, chairman of the Contracts Committee.
Mr. Bloomberg has argued that he does not want to use the city's buying power to legislate social issues.
A lawyer for the city, June Buch, said in a statement issued late on Tuesday that "the City Council cannot use unlawful means to reach a noble end."
But Alphonso David, a staff lawyer at Lambda Legal, a gay rights organization that supports the legislation, said the city imposed similar restrictions in the 1980's, refusing to do business with companies that were working with South Africa under apartheid.
The judges ruled that the city's law conflicted with state law because it would reduce the pool of contract bidders for reasons unrelated to the price or quality of their goods.
Mr. Holley took issue with that reasoning, saying the merits of the law were not directly before the court.
The issue, he said, was whether the mayor had the right to refuse to enforce the law in the first place.
"There's never been a trial," Mr. Holley said. "We never had an evidentiary hearing."
The judges also wrote that the law conflicts with a federal law that requires private employers with certain numbers of employees to provide certain types of benefits.
But Mr. Holley argued that in San Francisco, a Federal District Court ruled in the late 1990's that a similar benefits law did not conflict with the federal law.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the decision.
Lawmakers have hung their hopes on the State Court of Appeals. Ms. Quinn said yesterday that she did not see a legislative alternative to continuing the court battle.
She said the administration had refused to negotiate over the bill. "Our full legislative options and authority are complete," she said.
But a city official said that it was the lawmakers who had refused to budge.
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