Constitutional Law

Advancing Equality Step by Step

Congress should take a “simple step” toward advancing equality by “extending health benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees,” says a new Center for American Progress report. The report’s authors note that by passing a law to extend health care coverage to same-sex domestic partners, the federal government would fall in line with more than a dozen states and thousands of private businesses that already provide similar coverage. Winnie Stachelberg, Josh Rosenthal and Claire Stein-Ross write:

The federal government will be able to look for guidance to the 15 states and the District of Columbia who already provide same-sex domestic partner benefits for their employees as it enters the process of considering the Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligations Act. States began offering these benefits in different ways – from union negotiation to legislation to judicial decisions – but all have seen lower rates of enrollment and lower costs than expected. Their experiences show that the federal government has a lot gain from offering same-sex domestic partner benefits without serious costs.

 

The report is available here.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on September 23, 2008 (boomark / email).