Same-sex couples will get coverage
May 25, 2012
Same-sex spouses and partners are entitled to long-term care insurance coverage from CalPERS, a federal judge ruled Friday. [Sacramento Bee]
U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken scrubbed part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Wilken’s ruling said the public employee retirement system’s ban on long-term insurance for same-sex partners “appears to be motivated by anti-gay animus.” She said the man-woman provision in the federal law “violates the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee.”
Wilken is the second federal jurist to declare that part of the 1996 law unconstitutional.
CalPERS has refused to make the coverage available to same-sex spouses or domestic partners, citing the federal statute.
A Republican-led group of Congress members calling itself the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group opposed the decision.
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