It is not illegal for Salt Lake City to offer health insurance benefits to "adult designees" of city workers who live in the same household but are not married to the employee, a judge has ruled.
Third District Judge Stephen Roth issued a five-page opinion Friday stating that when employers offer such benefits it does not violate state law or the Utah Constitution.
Jane Marquardt, an attorney and board chairwoman of Equity Utah, applauded the judge's decision.
"It's a very important step for Utah to recognize that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees can be treated equally, at least as far as health insurance benefits go," Marquardt said.
This also applies to other people who are not homosexual, but who are in nontraditional relationships: "It's a good benefit for them also."
Roth's opinion is timely because Salt Lake City currently is in its open enrollment period for city workers to make any changes to their health insurance.
In the city ordinance reviewed by the court, the "adult designee" benefit does not appear to create any legal status or rights that are substantially equivalent to a legal marriage between a man and a woman, the judge wrote.
An adult designee is defined as anyone over age 18 who has lived in the city worker's household for a year and is either financially dependent upon the city worker, or has financial interdependence with that person. An "adult designee" could be a sister or brother, a parent, a romantic partner or friend. The ordinance also applies to the designee's children.
The judge noted that although insurance plans traditionally have been limited to spouses and dependent children, "as a practical matter single employees may have relationships outside marriage, whether motivated by family feeling, emotional attachment or practical considerations, which draw on their resources to provide the necessities of life, including health care."
Employee health insurance is a form of alternate compensation that can increase worker satisfaction, reduce stress, help retain valued workers and attract new hires, the judge wrote.
"Providing such benefits also can satisfy an employer's sense of social obligation, whether in the private or public sector," Roth wrote.
"The flexibility to extend the traditional concept of dependent as Salt Lake City proposes to do to meet the changing expectations of the marketplace and needs of employees can therefore be argued to be in the city's interest as an employer and public entity, as well as in the interests of covered employees," Roth ruled.
Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson said Friday he is pleased with Roth's ruling, which underscores the right of municipalities to provide insurance benefits to partners of city workers.
"The principle established by Judge Roth's opinion is an important one in that neither state statutes nor the state constitution prohibit the provision of equal benefits to people who are not the children or spouses of employees," Anderson said.
But Anderson still is unhappy with the "discriminatory" city ordinance now in place that gives such benefits to the "adult designees" of city workers— instead of "domestic partners."
For many, the term domestic partners implies same-sex couples and Anderson suggests the council was simply trying to sidestep the issue of gay unions in the benefit proposal.
What's more, Anderson insists the ordinance as it now stands actually discriminates against legally married heterosexual couples because they cannot designate an adult to get benefits.
Anderson on Sept. 21, 2005, signed his executive order changing its contract with the Public Employees Health Program (PEHP) to offer health insurance benefits to a "domestic partner" of a Salt Lake City employee.
The Utah State Retirement Board, which is PEHP's governing body, petitioned the court for an opinion as to whether it would be legal to offer such benefits.
The Salt Lake City Council then adopted an ordinance on Feb. 7, 2006, that provided a different package — one that permitted city workers to enroll an "adult designee" rather than a "domestic partner" in the city health insurance plan.
Anderson vetoed that measure, but the council on Feb. 23 unanimously overrode his veto and the "adult designee" ordinance now stands.
Earlier, three Salt Lake City residents and a conservative organization, the Alliance Defense Fund, filed a lawsuit opposing Anderson's order regarding domestic partners.
That lawsuit became moot once the city council enacted the program for adult designees, which supersedes Anderson's plan for domestic partners, according to Salt Lake City Attorney Ed Rutan.
During this year's state legislative session, Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper, sponsored HB327 that would have limited how the city offered such benefits, but that bill died with little fanfare.
Rutan said there now are no court or legislative controls on what Salt Lake City can do, so the program will begin. "We'll be moving ahead with PEHP to implement the adult designee program," he said.
Marquardt of Equity Utah noted that this is not only a matter of social justice but also addresses the economic unfairness of excluding same-sex partners from insurance benefits.
"For a long time, gay employees have not been paid equally for the same work. If you have two employees, one straight and one gay, and they're both paid $40,000 a year, but one gets health insurance for a spouse and children, and the other doesn't, the gay person is not being paid the same," Marquardt said.
"It's a matter of workplace equity to allow the unmarried person to also have health insurance available for their partner and children," she said.
Marquardt said she hopes this sets a precedent for other cities to expand the benefits offered to their work force.
E-mail: lindat@desnews.com