Montana Public Universities Must Offer Domestic Partner Health Benefits, Court Says
The Montana Supreme Court on Thursday in a 4-3 decision ruled that the state's public universities must provide the domestic partners of gay employees with health insurance coverage, the New York Times reports. Under the universities' existing policy, health care coverage for employees' dependents was limited to children and to the spouses of married employees. The policy required employees and spouses to prove they were married. One option for doing so was signing a sworn statement that they were part of a common-law marriage and had "mutually consented and contracted to become husband and wife" and assumed "all the responsibilities and duties which the law attached to such a relationship." The court ruled that limiting dependent health care coverage to heterosexual couples violates the equal protection clause of the state constitution.
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Carol Snetsinger, a plaintiff in the case, said the decision is important for her and her partner, whom she has lived with for 10 years. "Getting married would be a wonderful thing for us. But since that's not on the horizon in Montana any time soon, we're working on achieving the basic right to equal protection," she said. James Esseks, litigation director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights and AIDS projects, which represented the two lesbian couples who filed the suit, said, "It is the first time that any state high court has ruled that a state has a constitutional obligation to provide domestic partner health care benefits. It's a recognition by the Montana Supreme Court that the government can't treat gay people differently on economic issues." Sheila Stearns, Montana's commissioner of higher education, said the university system "will do everything ... to comply with the decision and the equal protection clause of the Montana constitution" (Liptak, New York Times, 12/31/04).
