Montana Supreme Court Says Gay Couples Due Benefits
Advocate,
December 31, 2004
The Montana university system’s policy of denying
employees’ same-sex partners the health insurance available to heterosexual
workers’ spouses is unconstitutional, the Montana supreme court ruled in a
4-3 decision Thursday.
The policy violates the Montana constitution’s
guarantee of equal protection under the law, the court said in reversing a
2002 decision by district judge Thomas Honzel of Helena.
The case originated when two women employed at the
University of Montana in Missoula challenged the university’s refusal to let
them buy health insurance for their female partners, who were not university
employees. Carol Snetsinger and Carla Grayson, who no longer work for the
school, said the policy was an affront to dignity as well as discriminatory.
Joining the women and respective partners Nancy Siegel
and Adrianne Neff in the lawsuit was the Montana gay rights group Pride Inc.
Advocates for the women included the Montana Human Rights Network, the MEA-MFT
teachers’ union, and several church parishes. The leadership of the
Republican-controlled state legislature sided with the university system, as
did the Montana Catholic Conference and Focus on the Family.
Snetsinger, Grayson, and their partners did not ask the
supreme court to address the issue of same-sex marriage in Montana, where
marriage is defined as the union of a man and a woman. The women said the case
was strictly a claim that the university benefit policy violates
constitutional rights to equal protection, dignity, and privacy and the right
to pursue life’s basic necessities and to seek safety, health, and
happiness.
In offering benefits to dependents of employees, the
university system limited eligibility to spouses and certain children. Those
eligible included partners who had signed a common-law marriage affidavit.
“A closer look at the university system’s policy discloses that marital
status...plays little if any role in determining who is eligible for
benefits,” the supreme court majority wrote. “Under the policy, the
partner of a nongay employee would qualify for benefits by signing an
affidavit, when the partner of a gay employee would not qualify for the same
benefits when signing the same affidavit.”
Based on that, the district court erred in its
equal-protection analysis, the supreme court said. “In truth, unmarried
opposite-sex couples are able to avail themselves of health benefits under the
university system’s policy while unmarried same-sex couples are denied the
health benefits,” the court said. “These two groups, although similarly
situated in all respects other than sexual orientation, are not treated
equally and fairly.”
There is “no justification for treating the two groups
differently,” said the court’s majority opinion, signed by justices Jim
Regnier, Jim Nelson, Patricia Cotter, and William Leaphart.
Dissenting justice Jim Rice said the court had radically
altered common-law marriage in Montana and reached “the dewpoint of
duplicity” in contending it did not do so. Justice John Warner concurred in
Rice’s dissent. In a separate dissent, Chief Justice Karla Gray said the
majority ignored the district court’s analysis of the issues in the case.
She also disputed the analysis of common-law marriage and
said the university system’s policy on insurance has reflected classes
“based entirely on the kinds of marriages recognized by Montana law, not
sexual orientation.” She continued, “For purposes of this case, the
difference between the ‘classes’ is that one class involves a spouse in a
legally recognized marital relationship and the other class involves a
committed partner in a relationship which under current Montana law does
not—and cannot—constitute a marriage in any legal sense.”
In a passionate special concurrence with the majority
opinion, Nelson wrote that gays and lesbians plead for respect and equal
justice, but are answered by their government and institutions with
“intolerance and bigotry, albeit impeccably adorned in sanctimonious
rhetoric, sterile logic, and hollow assurances.”
He said that “majoritarian politics relegates gays and
lesbians to a position of political powerlessness,” and noted that although
the Montana judiciary decriminalized homosexual sex, the legislature has
refused to strike a law prohibiting same-sex activity between consenting
adults.
Gray responded to the concurrence by writing that “we
all have passions that run deep and strong.... For myself, however, the closer
I stay to the law and away from personal passions, the better I perform this
very difficult job.”
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