The Star-Ledger

Civil Union law fails same-sex couples, lawyers' group says

BY ROBERT SCHWANEBERG, nj.com from the Web, Sept. 27, 2007

They were designed to give same-sex couples all the benefits of marriage by a different name, but civil unions in New Jersey are a "failed experiment," the president of the state's largest lawyers' organization said last night.

"They have been shown to perpetuate a second-class legal status," Lynn Newsome, president of the New Jersey State Bar Association told a state commission evaluating whether New Jersey's seven- month-old civil unions law is working.

Calling the law "burdensome and flawed," Newsome said the 17,000-member bar association supports "as one of its highest priorities" legislation allowing same- sex couples to marry.

The civil union law was passed to comply with last October's ruling by the state Supreme Court that same-sex couples are entitled to all the benefits and obligations that state law confers on married couples.

Last night's hearing at the New Jersey Law Center in New Brunswick was the first of three by the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission.

Even before the law took effect, gay rights organizations were complaining that civil unions carried a second-class status and would fail to ensure equality for same-sex couples.

Although the state Division on Civil Rights has received only six formal complaints by same-sex couples claiming they were denied their rights under the new law, many more informal complaints have been lodged with gay rights groups.

The gay advocacy group Lambda Legal has gotten more than 100 complaints from couples in civil unions, according to staff attorney David Buckel, who added, "I stopped keeping count because there were just too many."

Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, which has vowed to legalize same-sex marriage within two years, said his organization has received more than 300 complaints of civil unions not being honored.  Goldstein also serves as vice chairman of the commission.

Part of the problem is a 1996 federal law that denies same-sex couples the 1,138 federal benefits and obligations that various federal statutes confer on married couples.  Private employers and unions with federally regulated health and pension plans can use that law to avoid giving workers in civil unions the same benefits their married co- workers get.

Tom Barbera, a union leader in Massachusetts, the only state that allows same-sex couples to marry, told the commission most employers there do not hide behind the federal law.

"From the day our marriage equality law took effect (in 2004), through today, civil rights organizations in Massachusetts, as well as our state government, have received virtually no complaints about companies not providing health care benefits to same-sex married couples," Barbera said.  "This is in stark contrast to what New Jersey is experiencing."

Same-sex couples in New Jersey have not embraced civil unions the way they did domestic partnerships, which conveyed a fraction of the rights and became available in July 2004.  In the first month, 1,733 domestic partnerships were formed.  In the first six months that civil unions have been available, 1,514 same-sex couples have applied to form one.

J. Frank Vespa-Papaleo, the commission's chairman and director of the state Division on Civil Rights, said the hearings were intended "to give the public an opportunity to be heard on how the civil union law is working or is not working."

Robert Schwaneberg may be reached at (609) 989-0324 or rschwaneberg@starledger.com.