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April 1, 1999

Senate Council tables motion condemning University defense in same-sex benefits case

Senate Council tables motion condemning University defense in same-sex benefits case

Senate Council on March 22 tabled a motion condemning the University's legal defense in the Deborah Henson case.

Henson, a former legal writing instructor here, alleges that Pitt violated the city's anti-discrimination law by denying health benefits to her lesbian partner.

Prior to the Council meeting, the Graduate and Professional Students Association (GPSA) had adopted a resolution criticizing Pitt's motion to dismiss Henson's claim before the city Human Relations Commission. Attorneys for the University argue that the ci ty lacks the legal authority to force employers to extend health benefits to domestic partners.

Pitt's legal strategy "threatens all gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered citizens of Pittsburgh and could establish a dangerous legal precedent for overturning similar protections elsewhere in the state," the GPSA resolution read.

Senate Council debated adopting a similar resolution but voted 18-13 (with two members abstaining) to table it, after hearing conflicting opinions on what might happen if the Human Relations Commission accepts Pitt's motion to dismiss the Henson case.

As a tabled motion, it will come up again at the next Senate Council meeting, scheduled for April 12.

The University is not trying to undermine the city code or the rights of gays and lesbians, said Chancellor Mark Nordenberg and Executive Vice Chancellor Jerome Cochran.

Rather, they said, Pitt's strategy is purely defensive and seeks dismissal of a weak case.

Contrary to Henson's claim, the city code does not require Pitt or any other employer to extend health coverage to domestic partners — homosexual or heterosexual ones, Cochran said. The city itself does not offer such benefits to domestic partners, he no ted.

Cochran said Henson, not the University, will be to blame if a Pitt win in the case sets a precedent that's used to overturn legal protections for homosexuals.

But GPSA President Joel Cornfeld and several faculty members of Senate Council said Pitt's defense is immoral and amounts to legal overkill.

Richard Tobias of the Senate's anti-discriminatory policies committee said it would cost Pitt 1 cent for every student and $5 for each employee to extend health benefits to domestic partners. But Pitt administrators say the cost could be much higher.

Also at its March 22 meeting, Senate Council voted down a motion to give clinical faculty more access to legal documents describing their status as employees of both Pitt's School of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh Physicians (UPP) practice plan .

UPP, created this year, is a subsidiary of UPMC Health System and is independent of Pitt.

The motion was proposed by one such clinician, Nicholas Bircher, who said medical faculty still question whether their UPP hospital duties will conflict with their Pitt teaching and research.

Bircher's motion would have called on Chancellor Nordenberg to make available to the University Planning and Budgeting Committee and to an elected committee of medical professors "copies of any and all relevant portions, as determined by the president of the University Senate" of Pitt-UPMC-UPP affiliation agreements "for the purpose of informing [those two committees] of the precise nature of the joint employment status of clinical faculty within the School of Medicine."

Nordenberg balked at the request, saying it was contrary to medical professors' recent endorsement of a UPP employment agreement. See March 18 University Times.

Provost James Maher said Pitt's Faculty Handbook already spells out how medical faculty can seek redress if they believe their academic rights are being violated.

Council voted 16-8, with several abstentions, against Bircher's motion.

— Bruce Steele


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