Residents sue city over benefits for ‘gays’

On the heels of a landmark Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Texas law banning sodomy between homosexual males, a number of New Orleans residents have filed suit against the city for allegedly offering domestic partner benefits in violation of state law.

According to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the New Orleans residents by the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, the city, in offering the benefit, acted “without statutory authority when it provided for the definition, recognition and registry of ‘domestic partnerships,’ and extended health-insurance benefits to the unmarried domestic partners of its employees.”

Mike Johnson, a Louisiana attorney for the legal group, says issues other than an improper use of authority will be brought up as the case progresses.

“When we get to discovery, we expect to learn how much this illegal program has cost the taxpayers of New Orleans,” said Johnson.

Domestic partner benefits have, in the past, been associated with “gays” who have chosen to live together. But, ADF says, there is another aspect to the case vis-?-vis the state’s public policy that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with homosexual relationships.

The petition, which has been filed in Civil District Court, Parish of New Orleans, says Louisiana’s public policy “favors marriage over unmarried cohabitation by two adults,” the legal group said. “This state public policy is established by the Louisiana Constitution, the Louisiana statutes and pronouncements by state courts.”

Plaintiffs in the case are asking the court to declare New Orleans’ domestic-partner benefits in violation of the state constitution, lacking the statutory or constitutional authority “to provide health insurance or benefits to unmarried domestic partners of its employees, and that the city’s policy of offering domestic-partner benefits to its employees ‘violates state public policy favoring marriage of two adults over the unmarried cohabitation of two adults.'”

The suit also asks the city to stop spending taxpayer funds on health-insurance benefits for city employees who are or have domestic partners.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, New Orleans is one of 161 local governments that offer such benefits to members of the same and opposite sex. New Orleans only offers same-sex domestic partner benefits and has since 1997.