For immediate release ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Contact: Rutgers Alliance for Health Insurance Equity James D. Anderson, P.O. Box 38 New Brunswick, NJ 08903 908/249-1016 Gay Rutgers Employees Sue to End Denial of Health Benefits November 15, 1993. -- Today five Gay and Lesbian Rutgers Employees filed suit in Middlesex Superior Court against Rutgers University and the State of New Jersey to obtain the same health coverage that has been routinely given to heterosexual employees for generations. The suit calls for retroactive benefits from 1981, when Rutgers guaranteed an end to discrimination in employment and benefits on the basis of sexual orientation, and for compensatory damages. Joining in the suit as plaintiff is the Rutgers Council of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which represents all faculty members and teaching assistants at the university. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is providing counsel. The five Rutgers employees include one dean, three professors, and an extension agent. Since 1981, Rutgers has had a non-discrimination policy which outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and on marital status, yet the university continues to deny lesbian and gay employees the same coverage for their family members that heterosexual employees get. In 1991, Governor Florio signed an executive order to halt discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation by the State of New Jersey in employment and the provision of benefits. In 1992 the legislature passed and the governor signed into law a bill that bared discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment throughout the state. Yet the New Jersey Division of Pensions, which administers state health benefits, has refused to provide to gay and lesbian state employees the same health benefits provided to heterosexual employees. The President's Select Committee for Lesbian and Gay Concerns of Rutgers University has urged the university to provide the same benefits to lesbian and gay employees as are provided to heterosexual employees since 1988. The university has begun to provide bereavement leave, access to athletic facilities, library borrowing privileges for the "bona fide sole domestic partners" of lesbian and gay employees, and it is planning to open family housing to gay and lesbian graduate students, but it has rejected efforts to extend the single most important employment benefit of all -- health insurance and health care -- to the life partners of lesbian and gay employees. The United States health care system is based on family insurance through the place of employment. The reforms proposed by the Clinton Administration do not change this pattern. Lesbian and gay couples and families have the same health needs as all other citizens. It is gross discrimination on the part of the university and the State of New Jersey to deny health insurance and health coverage to employees merely because they are gay or lesbian. Rutgers University has been a leader in working to end discrimination against lesbian and gay students, faculty, and staff. It was one of the first universities to add "sexual orientation" to its non-discrimination policy. In 1988 it issued the landmark study, "In Every Classroom," which provided a history of the lesbian and gay community at Rutgers, an analysis of its current status, and 133 recommendations designed to end all forms of prejudicial discrimination. The university has implemented many of these recommendations, but it has fallen behind in the area of employee benefits. Many major universities have already begun providing family health coverage to lesbian and gay employees, including Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, MIT, Chicago and the public state universities of Minnesota, Iowa, and Vermont. Many corporations and political jurisdictions have also moved in this direction, including Levi Strauss, Ben & Jerry's, Lotus, San Francisco, and Boston. New York City is the latest city to provide these benefits to its lesbian and gay employees. In Vermont, where the University of Vermont has essentially the same non-discrimination policy as Rutgers, the State Labor Relations Board found the university in violation of its own anti-discrimination policy and ordered the university to provide equitable benefits to its gay and lesbian employees. University officials did not contest this order. In Minnesota, where insurers refuse to extend coverage to the life partners of gay and lesbian employees, the university is providing cash grants to its gay and lesbian employees for this purpose. The experience of both private and public employers has shown that the cost of supplying health benefits to gay and lesbian employees is typically less than 1% of the total benefit budget. The plaintiffs include long-time members of the Rutgers community. Several have also been leaders in the lesbian and gay liberation movement, both locally and nationally. In 1984 James D. Anderson was named by the Advocate, a national gay magazine, as one of 400 leading activists in the gay and lesbian movement in the U.S. Since 1980, he has served as the national communications secretary for Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns. At Rutgers, he chairs the President's Select Committee for Lesbian and Gay Concerns, as well as the Committee to Advance Our Common Purposes, the university-wide initiative for helping the entire university community to celebrate its diversity, its common purposes, and its multicultural communities and to do away with all forms of prejudice, bigotry, unjust discrimination, and harassment. In 1991, President Francis L. Lawrence presented him a university Public Service Award "in recognition for your more than a decade of work to educate and encourage your University and the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church U.S.A., to accord to Lesbian and Gay people the same rights and responsibilities enjoyed by all other citizens." Louie Crew has served on the governing boards of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). He co-founded the NCTE's Lesbian and Gay Caucus and was the founder of Integrity, the international justice ministry of lesbian and gay Anglicans. The Diocese of Newark elected him to co-chair its deputation to General Convention, the governing body of the Episcopal Church. Crew has addressed lesbian and gay issues at dozens of venues in Britain, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, and the United States. A prolific author, he co-edited the special issue of *College English*, the first issue of any academic journal edited by lesbians and gays about the lesbian and gay experience (November 1974). He also edited the collection *The Gay Academic* (1978). The plaintiffs hope that this suit will help the university reclaim its commitment to end all forms of illegitimate discrimination at the university and to promote equity for all persons who share the mission and goals of the university. For more information, contact James D. Anderson, Rutgers Alliance for Health Insurance Equity, P.O. Box 38, New Brunswick, NJ 08903-0038, 908/249-1016.