Cleveland City Council unanimously approved a measure extending benefits to same-sex partners of city employees who registered their union after 2012. ideastream’s Nick Castele reports.
In 2011, Cleveland City Council voted to offer health, dental, prescription drug and other benefits to the same-sex partners of employees enrolled in the city’s domestic partner registry. But council eventually set a deadline of March 2012. This new measure does away with that, granting benefits to the partners of employees who registered after that deadline.
City Councilman Joe Cimperman is one of the sponsors.
"In most cases, the state of Ohio would sanction a marriage between a man and a woman," Cimperman said. "Because we can’t do that, we wanted to make sure we can provide for employees’ partners."
The benefits are available only for people in same-sex unions, not opposite-sex domestic partners—the idea being that straight couples can marry in order to receive those benefits.
The city’s domestic partnership registry met some opposition when it was passed in 2008, with seven council members voting against it. This year, council voted to express symbolic support for same-sex marriage on a vote of 14 to 2.
Cimperman says he’d review this benefit program if the U.S. Supreme Court were to strike down Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage this summer.
