Salt Lake City – Salt Lake City’s mayor has signed an executive order granting benefits to the domestic partners of city workers regardless of marital status or sexual orientation. The decision may be challenged in court or by the Legislature.
The city estimates up to 30 of the city’s 2,600 employees will sign up for the option.
“This is an important step toward recognizing the needs and equality of all city employees,” said Mayor Rocky Anderson.
“Providing benefits to families, without discriminating on the basis of marital status or sexual orientation, will provide very real benefits to both the adults and children in employees’ families.”
Under the executive order, the city is to amend contracts with its insurance providers to include domestic partners. The order makes Salt Lake City the first government in the state to offer the benefits.
At least one state representative has said he believes domestic partner benefits are illegal in Utah, and the city’s nonprofit insurance administrator, the Public Employees Health Program, indicated it wants a judge to make a ruling on the matter.
PEHP estimated the addition of domestic partners would increase the city’s health insurance costs about $113,000 a year.
“We’ve had this thoroughly researched by our legal department, which is not an insubstantial group of people, knowing full well it would be challenged by some of our fine elected officials,” said Cliff Lyon, a spokesman for Anderson. “We are confident it is completely legal.”
State Sen. Scott McCoy, a Salt Lake City Democrat who is gay, said a court decision on the benefits could be valuable.
“This will clarify once and for all … that there isn’t a legal roadblock to offering these benefits,” McCoy told The Salt Lake Tribune. “The opposition is anti-gay.”
Rep. LaVar Christensen, a Draper Republican, has said he believes offering such benefits is illegal and if it’s not, he has said he will introduce legislation next year to make it so.
“By offering a competitive benefits package, which includes domestic partners and their children, Salt Lake City will be able to maintain its competitive position in the labor market as a progressive employer that values diversity,” Anderson said.
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C., called it “a courageous step in recognizing, on the mayor’s part, that all working American families deserve the same right to health- care benefits for themselves, for their partners and for their children.”
Nationwide, more than 8,000 U.S. employers offer domestic partner benefits, according to the organization.
