11/18/2009
Suit Filed in Arizona to Block Stripping of Domestic Partner Benefits
In September I posted about a bill signed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer eliminating state domestic partner benefits a year after they were implemented.
The Arizona Daily Star reported at the time: "A bill signed by Gov. Jan Brewer redefined a 'dependent,'
canceling the rule change made by Gov. Janet Napolitano that allowed
domestic partners to receive benefits. Also eliminated are children of domestic partners, full-time
students ages 23-24 and disabled adult dependents. The legislation is
in legal review. About 800 state employees are affected, according to the state's administration department."
Brewer, as you may also remember, takes direction from God when deciding how to solve the state's problems.
Lambda Legal has now filed a case attempting to block the move: "The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix claims the move amounts to a violation of constitutional protections that guarantee equal treatment of all individuals. Specifically, attorney Tara Borelli of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund said denying benefits to gay workers that are available to others amounts to paying them less for the same work. 'These gay and lesbian state workers just want the same thing that workers at the next desk, in the next patrol car, get,' she said. That argument was echoed by Tracy Collins, a senior patrol officer with the Department of Public Safety, one of the 10 plaintiffs in the lawsuit. If the change takes effect as scheduled next Oct. 1, she will lose the benefits that now go to her partner and the children they share."
The suit's plaintiffs come from the Arizona Highway Patrol, the State Department of Game and Fish and state universities, according to Lambda Legal.
Said Staff Attorney Tara Borelli: "This is an issue of equal pay for equal work.By stripping away these vital benefits from loyal state employees, the state isn't just paying them less for the same work than their heterosexual colleagues — it's pulling away a vital lifeline that all workers need. This is simply cruel and saves the state next to nothing."
Posted 9:30 AM EST by Andy Towle in Arizona, Gay Marriage, Jan Brewer, Lambda Legal, News | Permalink
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how could anyone that looks so much like GH's Monica Quartermaine be so mean?
but seriously, even hating 'the gays' does not explain why this woman would veto benefits for children and disabled adults. i find it difficult to believe ANY god would say that to her. she needs to upgrade her tinfoil hat to receive HD signals because she is clearly not receiving her god's big picture clearly.
Posted by: casey | Nov 18, 2009 10:32:09 AM
Casey this is Arizona. They've cut everything down to the quick to include education - then they wonder why test in the lower 48 of all states.
The alleged legislators are STILL going on to figure out this year's budget and it's 2 billion dollar deficit.
According to her statements, maybe God's direction is just to shut Arizona down.
:-)
Posted by: jakeinlove | Nov 18, 2009 12:15:19 PM
JAKEINLOVE,
We don't need God for that. We do a pretty good job of that ourselves.
Posted by: Marc C | Nov 18, 2009 12:38:36 PM
So then, will this employee, these employees, lose any personal employee benefits? NO!
This worker is still INDIVIDUALLY entitled to all of the personal benefits offered by that employer to all of their other employees; just the same as to any INDIVIDUAL EMPLOYEE. There is no denial of individual benefits, only a refusal to extend those benefits, and the cost thereof, …to others…when SOCIETY, that general base from which ALL monetary and any other support ultimately comes, has no reasonable need for that extension.
This worker is not being paid less! The employer is refusing to ask society to pay this worker more without reasonable cause.
First came living organisms. Then came a form of sexual reproduction. Then beings evolved from the muck and continued to reproduce. Eventually, protohumans and then humans resulted. Meanwhile babies were still being made and the realization came that these babies were the only real way for any clan to grow strong enough to protect itself. Then humans developed intelligence, realized a need for, and then organized into a society. Then SOCIETY INVENTED MARRIAGE as a MEANS to HELP provide for these babies that resulted from HETEROSEXUAL human mating practices AND were essential to the continued existence of that society. THEN society added benefits, incentives, rewards, and punishments to try to encourage heterosexual Mommies and Daddies to stay coupled with each other and care for the offspring that they, together, had caused to be born. (It was also seen as a means of anchoring workers to a location and keeping them available.)
Get them wives so they can be married and have children so they will set roots here and not be so mobile, is a paraphrase of something an early colonial governor was supposed to have commented.
Such a development as offspring cannot occur between same-sex partners; therefore, there would be, and still is, no reasonable incentive for society to encourage or recognize same-sex couples.
It is not a perfect system, GRANTED! And it did not flow as fluidly as the preceding scenario might suggest. The reasoning itself may only be about as old as the discovery of the New World. And the major incentives, those the same-sex crowd is claiming they are being denied, are less than a century old.
But that is still the only reason these conditions have been made available to heterosexual married couples.
HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS DO NOT QUALIFY!
There is no second-class citizenship here. ALL INDIVIDUALS are granted, and guaranteed as much as the law can provide, the same Constitutional protections under the law!
Homosexual persons are entitled to all of the same individual benefits, LIFE, LIBERTY, and The PURSUIT of HAPPINESS, offered by society to any other individual and have no claim on ANY additional benefits that might be granted by society to heterosexual persons who decide to marry and remain together.
THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES!!
LIVE, BE FREE, and TRY to be HAPPY!
Posted by: dhoward4 | Nov 20, 2009 5:49:49 AM