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May 13, 2004

Are Health Benefits for Same-sex Partners in Pitt’s Future?

University officials appear to be working behind the scenes to resolve the divisive issue of extending Pitt health benefits to employees’ same-sex domestic partners – in a way that should satisfy proponents of extending the benefits, says the University Senate’s newly re-elected president.
“We’ve been told by the administration that there are things in the works, but we haven’t been told exactly what they are,” Nicholas G. Bircher said, choosing his words carefully. “Let me put it this way: I believe that work is progressing in that area, although I’m not privy to the details.”
The University remains embroiled in a lawsuit by current and former Pitt faculty and staff members seeking to force the University to begin offering employee medical coverage to same-sex partners.
Senate groups have been calling on Pitt’s administration for years to make that move voluntarily. “That remains an intermediate-range goal of the Senate. It’s not going to be solved in the next couple of months,” said Bircher, an associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine.
But the issue could be resolved within the next year, Bircher said, based on what he’s heard about the administration’s behind-the-scenes efforts.
Asked whether Pitt administrators and/or trustees are engaged in talks to reach an out-of-court agreement that would extend University health benefits to employees’ same-sex domestic partners, Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg replied: “Obviously, we continue to participate in the litigation, as our adversaries press forward with their claims in that forum. For us, though, the more important considerations and conversations are taking place outside of the pending lawsuits.
“We certainly do sense that the competitive issues are becoming more pronounced, and we continue to view this issue as a high-priority one for the University.”
Nordenberg declined to say whether, by “competitive issues,” he was referring specifically to Pitt’s ability to compete for high-quality faculty. As more universities and other employers have begun offering medical coverage to their employees’ gay and lesbian partners, some Pitt department chairpersons have complained that the lack of such benefits here – and the University’s much-publicized challenge to a city equal rights ordinance – put their departments at a recruiting disadvantage.
But same-sex partner benefits remain a touchy issue in Harrisburg, said Bircher.
He noted that state lawmakers opposed to such benefits might push through the General Assembly a line-item funding cut in Pitt’s state appropriation, similar to one that legislators from northwestern Pennsylvania imposed in summer 2001 in retaliation for the Pitt Environmental Law Clinic’s work on behalf of environmentalists opposed to logging in the Allegheny National Forest.
Legislators “might even decide that the same-sex benefits issue is big enough that they’re going to markedly reduce or eliminate Pitt’s allocation,” said Bircher.
“Now, I don’t think that would fly politically. But legislators have previously demonstrated that they can use the budgetary mechanism as a way to convey a message to the University, a message with real economic teeth to it. It’s one of the reasons that everybody is being so careful” about possibly extending Pitt medical benefits to employees’ same-sex partners.
— Bruce Steele


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