Date:    Tue, 13 May 1997 11:48:25 -0400
From:    LLDEFNY@AOL.COM
Subject: Lambda Helps Chicago Domestic Partnership Ordinance Survive

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 13, 1997

Contact:  Patricia Logue 312-663-4413
Peg Byron 212-809-8585, 888-987-1984 pager

Lambda Helps Chicago Domestic Partnership Ordinance Survive
Lambda clients and City of Chicago prevail in ensuring equal compensation

(CHICAGO, May 12, 1997)    Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and the
City of Chicago successfully fought off an attempt to block the new city
ordinance allowing health and other employment benefits for the domestic
partners of municipal workers.

Patricia M. Logue, managing attorney for Lambda's Midwest Regional Office in
Chicago, said after argument in Cook County Circuit Court, "This victory
means that, as of Friday, Chicago takes an important step toward equalizing
compensation for its employees.  Lesbian and gay city workers can now get
health insurance for their families and have the same security that married
employees take for granted."

The city's domestic partnership ordinance, passed March 19, 1997, by the
Chicago City Council, takes effect on Friday, May 16.

The case, Crawford, et al. v. City of Chicago, was brought by a local
minister and others seeking to stop implementation of the health benefits
ordinance.  The opponents argued that the city did not have power under
Illinois law to provide benefits to employees for their domestic partners or
to in any way recognize unmarried couples.  A leader of the group, the Rev.
Hiram Crawford, has vigorously opposed the domestic partner ordinance as well
as the Chicago Human Rights Ordinance on religious grounds.

However, supporters said that the ordinance would widen Chicago's safety net
for its workers while offering to lesbian and gay employees compensation
packages that are more like those offered to non-gay workers.

The trend toward providing domestic partner benefits is escalating among both
public and private employers throughout the country.

Judge Thomas Durkin, agreeing that Lambda clients, two city workers, Cheryl
Tadin and Sandra King, could intervene to protect their rights to receive
benefits under the ordinance, heard argument and then rejected the request
for a temporary restraining order. A further hearing is set for August 15,
1997.

Tadin has been a city employee for 12 years and is in a 12-year relationship.
 King has been a city employee for six years and is in a five-year
relationship.

Lambda is the nation's oldest and largest legal organization defending civil
rights for lesbians, gay men, and people with HIV and AIDS.  In addition to
its Midwest Regional Office in Chicago, Lambda has a National Headquarters in
New York and a Western Regional Office in Los Angeles.  It will open a
Southern Regional Office in Atlanta in early summer.

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End of GLB-PRESS Digest - 12 May 1997 to 13 May 1997
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