STATE BANS ON DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIP BENEFITS: Walter Olson replies to Joshua Baker--READ THIS VERSION!!!

[I somehow failed to successfully cut-and-paste here. At times, my friends use me as evidence against natural selection.... My apologies. Here is the real post. --Eve]

Joshua Baker, on the Oct. 15 Marriage Debate, writes as follows:

No state, not even Nebraska (with a marriage amendment that explicitly bans recognition of domestic partnerships) has ever limited the right of a private employer to extend health insurance to the domestic partners of its employees....It's easy to make claims. But claims need support from argument and/or (at least) anecdote.

Baker is in error. The state of Virginia forbids employers from extending group health insurance to employees' domestic partners. (Self-insured employers can get around the rule, but not many companies are large enough to do that.) In recent years some members of the state legislature have sought to legalize such coverage but their efforts have been opposed by the Religious Right and thus far have fallen short of success. See, for example, here and here.

Press accounts differ as to whether any other states impose similar restrictions (many articles describe Virginia as standing alone, but the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot article says that Tennessee and West Virginia also restrict such coverage). Georgia used to forbid private DP coverage but dropped the policy, in part because national businesses want the freedom to offer such benefits where advantageous. Given the enthusiasm of the Virginia Religious Right forces for keeping their state's ban in place, it is far from unreasonable to suspect that their co-thinkers in other states might also harbor an ambition of restricting the availability of private domestic-partner health benefits.

posted by Eve at 11:02 PM | link

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