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S.F. Court Victory Brings L.A. Domestic Partners Ordinance Closer to Reality

San Francisco-style domestic partners' ordinance may be coming to Los Angeles a lot sooner than expected now that the San Francisco law has survived a challenge in federal court.

In a landmark decision for gay and lesbian employees, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled May 27 in favor of San Francisco's pioneering and expansive domestic partners law against challenges brought by the airline industry and a Religious Right-backed company. The case was watched by gay rights advocates around the country who hope to introduce similar ordinances in their municipalities.

"I'm overjoyed at this decision," said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg. "It means that legislation that I've introduced has a leg up because they've taken the heat for us. That'll improve my chances when the legislation comes before my committee sometime early next month. Hopefully we can do the same thing here in Los Angeles."

Right now, Goldberg's proposal is being reviewed by the Los Angeles city attorney's office. Goldberg, who is lesbian, said calls of support to other members of the City Council are always helpful in moving legislation along.

Wilken's summary judgment against the Air Transport Association (ATA) ordered all air carriers using San Francisco International Airport to provide so-called "soft" benefits such as bereavement and family medical leave, relocation compensation, and travel privileges to partners of unmarried workers. The judge had previously ruled that the city could not force the airlines to provide health and pension benefits to unmarried and gay employees because those are covered by federal law. .

"This is a great victory," said Jenny Pizer, managing attorney of the western regional office of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, ticking off three main reasons why. First, the airlines must alter their benefits plans to recognize unmarried partners. "Recognition and respect, although non-monetary, are of enormous and incalculable value."

Second, "this is a vastly important step toward full benefits. The inequity of having a two-tier program within the airlines for dependent benefits is plain discrimination and most large professional businesses are not comfortable engaging in overt discrimination.

"Third, this is a national first. This is the first decision from a federal court finding that these benefits are not burdensome. That's valuable in any number of contexts. It's recognition from a credible source of the important fact of workplace benefits. Other cities interested in this idea have been watching San Francisco to see if it's legally logical and sound. It now has a clean bill of health so community leaders in Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York and Berkley, among others, now have a green light to move forward."

Kim Mills, who spearheads the Human Rights Campaign's advocacy around workplace issues, says the ruling is part of a larger trend. "What we've seen in the last year is more municipalities moving toward domestic partner benefits for their employees and there are municipalities looking at San Francisco interested in doing something similar," she said. "So this court decision is a good signal."

Mills said the debate is shifting from one of countering the belief that domestic partner benefits are "special rights' to a recognition they are really a matter of basic fairness and equal pay for equal work.

"More employees are going to their managers and saying, in effect, 'I am being paid less than the married person in the desk sitting next to me because I can't get health insurance and other benefits for my partner,'" she said. "They are making the business case that equal benefits helps attract good employees in a tight market and boosts morale and productivity. When employers realize that benefits are equal to income, and they're not going to be expensive, it starts making sense."

Measures such as the San Francisco ordinance have a domino effect, Mills said. When companies doing business with the city of San Francisco added domestic partners benefits, others followed suit so that they could remain competitive in recruiting employees.

Enacted two years ago, the San Francisco ordinance demanded that any company with city contracts must not discriminate against unmarried partners or gay and lesbian employees, including in disparate benefit compensation. The airline industry, with United Airlines and Federal Express leading the way, insisted in court that they were federally regulated and should be exempt from the ordinance when seeking to obtain leases at the airport.

In her April 1998 ruling, Wilken agreed that the airlines didn't have to provide equal health and pension benefits which are governed by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Her recent ruling, however, mandated that the airlines--and any other city contractor within or outside city boundaries--must provide non-ERISA benefits.

While the courts have often given "flimsy" reasons for ruling against domestic partner benefits, San Francisco officials were able to frame their case in a very nuts-and-bolts manner, Pizer said.

"If a worker is paid 30 percent less [an average compensation package], that's real value and measurable discrimination," she said. "It's long been the city's policy to not affiliate with or subsidize discrimination by awarding the benefit of a public contract to those who discriminate."

In her ruling, the judge recognized that the city was acting like a consumer, not as a local government trying to impose its own rules, and therefore could claim some "market participation exceptions" to federal law and that the airlines produced no evidence that providing "soft" benefits was a burden.

Wilken dismissed the second suit, S.D. Myers vs. San Francisco, brought by the Christian Coalition-backed American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ). The Ohio-based electrical maintenance company sued after the city refused to grant it a contract because it objected to having to recognize unmarried couples on religious grounds.

ACLJ had argued that the city ordinance conflicted with California marriage laws, but the city and civil rights groups like Lambda pointed out that in many instances the state protects domestic partners and forbids marital status discrimination such as in the famed Marvin vs. Marvin decision. Additionally, since the company only provided benefits to legal spouses, and refused to grant even non-ERISA benefits, she said they were automatically disqualified from receiving a city contract.

--Karen Ocamb