Employers await ruling on gay marriage licenses.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

Kate Hill and Jennifer Meyer are back to playing the waiting game.

Almost two years ago, Hill, a psychiatric social worker at Sacred Heart Medical Center, sought health coverage for Meyer, her partner of 22 years, after Meyer was laid off from her job as a technical writer.

It took a year for Sacred Heart to turn down their request, Hill said. While they weren't given anything in writing, they got the sense that if they had a marriage license, they could apply for the health benefits.

This week, with a license from Multnomah County, they went back to Sacred Heart to apply for benefits, only to be told no again.

"They said it's being looked at by their legal consultants," Hill said Thursday. "It could take forever."

The hospital made a decision last fall to extend benefits to domestic partners including same-sex couples and to nontraditional families, said Brian Terrett, a spokesman for PeaceHealth, Sacred Heart's parent corporation. Such a family, for example, could be made up of two adult sisters living together, he said.

PeaceHealth is now sorting out how to write a fair policy and how to pay for the benefits, Terrett said.

"From a social justice perspective, it really would be appropriate for us to extend benefits to more than just same-sex couples or opposite-sex couples, but to legally domiciled adults," he said.

But it's not clear how soon Sacred Heart will offer such benefits or how much they would cost, he said, though a memo to employees dated last Oct. 17 estimated the price tag for the Oregon region at $750,000 annually.

The memo neither rules out such benefits nor commits to them. "There will continue to be consideration of extended family benefits," wrote Alan Yordy, CEO of PeaceHealth's Oregon region, which employs 3,400 people.

The marriage licenses issued by Multnomah County throw an added wrinkle into the picture, Terrett said, and PeaceHealth will wait to see how the courts rule.

Two national religious groups asked the Oregon Supreme Court on Thursday to stop the county from issuing marriage licenses to gays and lesbians. More than 1,400 licenses have been issued.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Dale Koch denied a request for a restraining order this week to halt the same-sex licenses. Another hearing is set for today.

Meanwhile, everyone interested in the issue is waiting for an opinion that state Attorney General Hardy Myers is expected to issue to Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

"Our hope is that we do get a ruling soon," Terrett said.

PeaceHealth isn't the only employer waiting on an answer from the courts.

Questions about the marriage licenses and employers' responsibilities have begun trickling in to PacificSource, a Eugene-based health insurance company that insures 3,330 employers in Oregon, including private businesses and government agencies such as schools.

"They're wondering if they need to add this to their coverage," PacificSource spokeswoman Colleen Thompson said.

PacificSource offers coverage for domestic partners to companies with 26 or more employees, but not many firms take advantage of it because of concerns that it will increase their costs, Thompson said.

Currently, 73 of PacificSource's employers offer domestic partner coverage. Of those, 50 offer the benefits to same-sex and opposite-sex partners, while 23 offer it only to same-sex couples, Thompson said. Most of the 73 employers are government agencies, which began offering such benefits in 1998.

PacificSource is taking a wait-and-see approach to the newly issued licenses, Thompson said. "We don't want to go ahead and make a change in our policy and have to revoke it if the law is interpreted differently."

For employers who already offer such benefits to unmarried partners, such as Symantec in Springfield, the new licenses are largely a moot point.

But if courts do support the marriage licenses, employers who offer benefits to heterosexual married couples won't be able to deny spousal benefits to married gay and lesbian couples, said Amy Klare, civil rights division administrator for the state Bureau of Labor and Industries.

Her agency has received one inquiry about the issue so far, Klare said.

For Meyer and Hill, the health benefits aren't just a matter of equal rights. There's a financial burden, too. After she was laid off, Meyer kept her health coverage, but had to pick up the cost - more than $400 a month. Now, she's working on a contract basis with a firm that provides insurance, but it costs her $200 a month. The contract lasts for only nine months, and if it isn't extended, she'll have to find a private insurer

Meyer suffers from chronic pancreatitis, and a private insurer would likely exclude coverage for that condition, she said.

The marriage license also has given Meyer and Hill a new and unexpected sense of validation that makes them want to push harder for change.

"When we started out to build a family 21 years ago, we knew we were on the fringe and that some people would hate us," Meyer said. "Suddenly, I'm saying for the first time in my life, 'Wait a minute. Who says I have to be a second-class citizen?' '