Reasons MFC Opposes
SF 960 (Higgins)/HF 1097
(Davnie) which Authorizes Local Government Units to
Establish Domestic Partner Benefits
1)
Authorizes local
units of government to redefine family and grant same-sex
marriage benefits for homosexual partners of public
employees.
2)
Benefits for
spouses and dependent children are a statewide policy not a
local government policy. Some issues are worthy
of statewide policies.
Tort and criminal laws are examples of policies we
wouldn’t want redefined.
Same with marriage benefits. Bill would mean local
schools, towns, cities and counties could all change the
definition of family.
So the result would be a patchwork of different
definitions of marriage and family across the state. So driving across I-90
or down I-35 one would travel through jurisdictions with
different definitions of family. Even within one school
district’s geographical area, there might be different,
conflicting definitions of family.
3)
There’s a rational basis for the current
law which covers spouses and dependent children. There exists a
legal duty to care for these individuals. No such legal duty
exists for same-sex or other groups of people which might be
granted dependent status. These individuals
would be given special benefits versus spouses and
children.
Employees given this benefit would
not have any responsibility to care for the
persons.
4)
The impetus for this bill is OutFront
Minnesota, a homosexual activist group. They would like to
see the enactment of same-sex marriage. They are taking an
incremental approach by establishing marriage-like statuses
for homosexual couples and granting homosexual couples
benefits currently afforded to married couples. As
the League of Minnesota Cities Executive Director, James
Miller, in a March 22, 2007 letter to the Senate sponsor said,
“Although not mentioned in the bill by name, the League
recognizes that the group most likely to benefit from this
expanded definition is domestic
partners.”
5)
The bill
contains no protections for many family members who wouldn’t
be covered by domestic partner plans and thus be subject to
discriminatory treatment. Also, there’s no
restriction on the number of domestic partners an employee
could have covered by a local governmental unit. Parents, disabled
adult children, adult siblings for whom an employee provides
care would in all likelihood not be covered.
6)
The argument
that local units of government need same-sex domestic partner
benefits to remain competitive employers doesn’t hold
up. The
number of employers who access these benefits when the state
temporarily offered them was less than two tenths of 1%. 85 employees out of
50,000 state employees sought them. If local governments
truly wanted to be more competitive they would offer benefits
to a wider class of potential employees.
7)
There are
significant fiscal impacts. The language expands
dependent to include unmarried children under the age of 25
years whether or not they are students, as currently required
for children over 18.
There is no requirement that these children be claimed
as dependents by their parents. The cost of expanded
benefits will be borne partly by local taxpayers, resulting in
pressure to raise local property taxes and increase local
government aid by the
state.