More on Domestic-Partner Benefits

Michigan universities are looking for a legal way around a February court ruling banning state universities from providing health and other benefits to same-sex partners (also see a previous blog item) because it would violate the state’s marriage amendment, an article in the Detroit Free Press reports. According to a survey conducted by the Free Press:

• Michigan State University will launch a pilot program July 1 to provide benefits to domestic partners regardless of sexual orientation in an apparent effort to continue coverage for same-sex partners of some employees.

• Wayne State University is developing a similar policy that it hopes to enact within the next year.

• The University of Michigan is continuing coverage, but will have to make adjustments later this year for non-contract employees whose benefit plans expire Jan. 1. No estimate of how many university employees would be affected was available.

• At Eastern Michigan University, negotiators dropped same-sex benefits from a recently adopted faculty contract. But the university is exploring options to extend coverage without violating the law, an EMU attorney said, and so far no one has been dropped from the policy.

Meanwhile, an appeal of that ruling is still pending before the Michigan Supreme Court, but a final decision is unlikely to come before next year.

In related news, the University of Kentucky also has a plan to expand its health-care coverage to any adult who lives with a university employee — “a sponsored dependent” — and that person’s children, according to an item on The Chronicle’s News Blog.