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The New York Times
U.S.
Mich. high court says
gay partners
can't get health
benefits
By AP from
nytimes.com on the Web, May 7, 2008
LANSING, Mich. -- Local
governments and state universities in Michigan can't offer health insurance to
the partners of gay workers, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
The court ruled 5-2 that Michigan's 2004 ban against gay marriage also blocks
domestic-partner policies affecting gay employees at the University of Michigan
and other public-sector employers.
The decision affirms a February 2007 appeals court ruling.
Up to 20 public universities, community colleges, school districts and local
governments in Michigan have benefit policies covering at least 375 gay couples.
After the appeals court ruled, universities and local governments rewrote their
policies to try to comply with the gay marriage ban -- so the effect of
Wednesday's decision is unclear.
The new policies no longer specifically acknowledge domestic partnerships but
make sure ''other qualified adults,'' including gay partners, are eligible for
medical and dental care. The adults have to live together for a certain
amount of time, be unmarried, share finances and be unrelated.
The voter-approved law, which passed 59 percent to 41 percent, says the union
between a man and woman is the only agreement recognized as a marriage ''or
similar union for any purpose.''
Justice Stephen Markman, writing for the majority, said that while marriages and
domestic partnerships aren't identical, they are similar.
Dissenting Justices Michael Cavanagh and Marilyn Kelly said the constitutional
amendment prohibits nothing more than same-sex marriages or similar unions.
They argued that circumstances surrounding the election suggest Michigan voters
didn't intend to take away people's benefits.
Republican Attorney General Mike Cox in 2005 interpreted the measure to make
unconstitutional existing domestic partner policies at the city of Kalamazoo and
elsewhere.
Twenty-one gay couples sued, saying the amendment was about marriage and
preserving the status quo -- not taking away benefits from gays. Democratic Gov.
Jennifer Granholm has sided with the couples.
The couples represented, by the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan,
argued that the ballot committee that sponsored Proposal 2 ''consistently and
repeatedly'' assured voters that the initiative was only about protecting
marriage.
Markman noted, however, that both supporters and opponents of the amendment said
ahead of time that benefits would be prohibited by the amendment.
''The role of this Court is not to determine who said what about the amendment
before it was ratified, or to speculate about how these statements may have
influenced voters,'' he wrote. ''Instead, our responsibility is, as it has
always been in matters of constitutional interpretation, to determine the
meaning of the amendment's actual language.''
Kelly countered that gay partners allowed to get health insurance aren't granted
other rights, responsibilities or benefits of marriage -- equal rights to
property, for instance.
''It is an odd notion to find that a union that shares only one of the hundreds
of benefits that a marriage provides is a union similar to marriage,'' she
wrote.
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