Same-sex couples must get benefits

By DAN GEARINO

The Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS

Ohio employers now must recognize same-sex marriages for employees, even if they don’t want to.

That is one of the many employment and tax implications tied to Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Almost immediately, employers who offer benefits to spouses will need to include same-sex spouses, if they do not already. This includes individuals who were married in other states where gay marriage has been legal.

“Your run-of-the-mill employer is going to have to accept same-sex marriage,” said Jim Petrie, leader of the employment-law group at Bricker & Eckler in Columbus. “If they don’t, then there are going to be problems under civil-rights law.”

Opponents of same-sex marriage criticized the ruling, with the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops saying “the court is wrong again” and calling the decision “profoundly immoral and unjust.”

Though the opponents lost in court, there are pending cases that seek to allow employers to claim a moral exemption to recognizing gay marriages.

The recognition of gay marriage will add to the population eligible for employer-sponsored health insurance.

The effect on costs will be determined by the health of the new enrollees, said Keith Golden, a Columbus lawyer whose practice focuses on family and business law.

“It could end up costing [employers] money. It could end up saving [employers] money,” he said.

When gay marriage was illegal, many Ohio employers sought to provide marriage-like benefits by letting employees designate a “domestic partner” – same sex or otherwise. It remains to be seen how the ruling will affect the benefits.

“I think there will still be domestic-partner policies because lots of people who are domestic partners are people who do not feel like getting married,” Petrie said.

Piada, the Columbus-based restaurant chain, has offered domestic-partner benefits since it opened in 2010. It is one of many employers that allow benefits for all committed couples, whether same-sex or opposite-sex.

“We just wanted to be all-inclusive of all living situations,” said Matt Eisenacher, Piada’s director of marketing. He doesn’t anticipate any change to the policy in light of the court’s ruling.

As of two years ago, 32 percent of civilian workers had benefits that could cover an unmarried same-sex partner, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This was compared with 72 percent of workers with benefits that could cover a spouse.

Among the other likely changes for couples with newly recognized marriages, according to Petrie:

The ability to take family and medical leave under federal law.

Expanded access to bereavement leave under most employer policies.

And then there are some changes that same-sex couples may not like. For example, a same-sex spouse may now be covered by an employer’s anti-nepotism policy.

Some of those who have been looking forward to legal same-sex marriage in Ohio have multiple reasons for doing so.

“I am personally ecstatic and professionally ecstatic,” said Carol Ann Fey, a Bexley family-law lawyer who married her partner – “a woman” – in Massachusetts in 2004.

Some of her clients have legal issues that are specific to the gay community and could be affected by Friday’s ruling.

The effects of the ruling will take time to sink in, even for people such as Fey, who has been anticipating and hoping for this day.

“We’ve been together for 28 years,” she said about her wife, with whom she raised three children.

“If we could have been married sooner, we would have.”