S.L.'s attorney defends health-insurance plan

Salt Lake City's attorney this week reiterated the City Council's stance that it is legal to offer health insurance to adult siblings, parents, long-term roommates and partners of city employees.

City Attorney Ed Rutan on Thursday filed Salt Lake's formal response to a request by the city's insurer for a judge's ruling on the matter. The Utah Retirement Board, which operates the Public Employees Health Plan, last week asked 3rd District Court Judge Stephen Roth to decide whether the city can legally start offering the insurance, which began a one-month open-enrollment period Wednesday.

The city is collecting employees' paperwork, such as joint checking-account statements, joint mortgage documents and shared life-insurance policies, but the insurer will not begin providing coverage until Roth issues a ruling. The state board wants to know if the city's ordinance, passed last month, violates Utah laws that define marriage as solely between a man and a woman by creating benefits equivalent to those given married couples.

"These health benefits are benefits of employment, not of marriage," Rutan wrote Thursday. "Nor are these benefits even remotely equivalent to the entire basket of rights provided to married couples under Utah law."

The insurer last fall asked Roth to decide on the legality of a plan by Mayor Rocky Anderson to offer health insurance to domestic partners of city employees. Anderson also faced a court challenge from residents, who argued that his executive order violated Utah's laws defining marriage.

After Anderson's order, however, the City Council developed a similar insurance offer for employees but broadened it to include anyone who lives long-term with a city employee.

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