The State Journal-Register
The text of the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act opens with these words:
“This Act shall be liberally construed and applied to promote its underlying purposes, which are to provide adequate procedures for the certification and registration of a civil union and provide persons entering into a civil union with the obligations, responsibilities, protections, and benefits afforded or recognized by the law of Illinois to spouses.”
Springfield city government’s Joint Labor/Management Health Care Committee, however, has decided that the liberal construction mandated in the state’s civil unions law doesn’t apply here. Citing a desire to avoid increased insurance premiums for city workers, the committee said last week that the city will not cover partners of employees in civil unions next year.
We’ll be blunt here with the message this sends: If you’re in a civil union, you’re a second-class citizen according to Springfield municipal government standards.
There is no way to sugar-coat that message, though we’ll get to its technical underpinnings shortly. The state passed its civil unions law as a civil rights measure. It expanded the state’s legal definition of family so that same-sex couples would have all the protections from discrimination that had historically extended to married couples.
By excluding civil union partners from a benefit now granted to married couples, the city will be discriminating under Illinois law. It’s that simple.
Now for the technicalities.
The city says that because it is self-insured, state law does not require it to provide coverage to dependents of employees in civil unions. In other words, the Illinois Department of Insurance regulates insurance companies, and since the city of Springfield is not an insurance company, it’s not subject to control by the department.
We think the Joint Labor/Management Health Care Committee is trying to create a gray area here where there is none. State law is very clear on the issue of equal treatment of civil union couples in exactly these circumstances. There is a gray area in this case only if you still choose to view couples in civil unions as less worthy of civil protection. Springfield city government has no business taking that view.
The other reason cited by the committee is cost. It said an actuarial estimate put the cost at $725,000 to bring the city into compliance with the civil unions law. This is an extremely interesting argument, considering that across the street, Sangamon County government already offers civil union coverage. The extra cost was not exorbitant, according to County Administrator Brian McFadden.
We are profoundly puzzled and disappointed in the committee’s decision. The priority here should be figuring out how to come into compliance with state civil rights law, not finding technical reasons to evade it. Springfield should be embarrassed that this issue even came up.
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