Court upholds New Orleans' partner policy

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Ann Rostow, PlanetOut Network
Tuesday, December 20, 2005 / 03:40 PM

A state appellate court in Louisiana has upheld a domestic partner plan and registry instituted by the city of New Orleans in the late 1990s.
According to Lambda Legal, New Orleans started offering health insurance to the partners of gay and lesbian city employees in 1997. Two years later, the City Council set up a registry allowing same-sex couples throughout its jurisdiction to formally record their partnerships.
In 2003, a group of citizens sued the city, claiming that their status as taxpayers gave them the right to challenge the policies in court. Usually, a disinterested third party is not allowed to challenge a law or intervene in a suit that does not have a direct impact on their lives. Indeed, a lower court dismissed the suit last May, ruling that the group lacked legal standing to sue. In a decision announced Monday, the Fourth Circuit state appellate court agreed.
The petitioners were represented by the conservative Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). There is no indication yet whether the ADF plans to appeal the decision to the Louisiana Supreme Court.
The conservatives claimed that the domestic partner plan violated the state's law against same-sex marriage, a statute that has since become embedded in the state Constitution. This same argument has also been advanced in Michigan, where the ACLU is fighting to clarify the scope of the Michigan marriage amendment, and in Ohio, where Lambda is confronting an attack on Miami University's domestic partner plan on the same grounds. Marriage and partner opponents also sued in Utah after the mayor of Salt Lake City authorized benefits by executive order earlier this fall.
In rejecting the Louisiana case, the 2-1 appellate majority ruled that the plaintiffs "have not established the minimal requisite interest, and therefore lack the requisite interest sufficient to afford him a right of action."
In a dispatch, the Associated Press reported that the ADF attorneys suggested to the court that state law allows taxpayers to contest any public actions that increase government costs, regardless of the amount in question. Their view was accepted by dissenting judge Patricia Rivet Murray, who nonetheless acknowledged that the cost of the benefits had a "minuscule" impact on the city budget.

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