SAN FRANCISCO — Businesses that provide discounts, special services or other privileges to married couples must extend the same rights and benefits to same-sex couples registered as state domestic partners, the California Supreme Court decided 6-0 on Monday.
The ruling will affect a broad range of businesses, including banks and mortgage lenders, auto insurers and health clubs. Lenders will have to consider domestic partners' joint income in making loans, and insurers will have to offer the same multiple-driver discounts they give married couples.
The decision adds to a growing body of legislation and court decisions that have put California ahead of most other states in extending rights to same-sex couples.
"This is a very significant step toward equality," said Jon W. Davidson, an attorney with Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund who argued the case. Randy Thomasson, an opponent of the state's domestic partners law, responded to Monday's ruling by calling on voters to "stop the out-of-control courts from trampling marriage and trashing the deeply felt standards of private businesses and organizations."
The court ruled in favor of a lesbian couple who sued a country club in San Diego after it denied the member's partner golfing privileges given to spouses. The couple said the club was violating a state civil rights law.
"A business that extends benefits to spouses it denies to registered domestic partners engages in impermissible marital status discrimination," the court ruled.
The decision directly affects how businesses treat the domestic partners of clients or customers. Employee benefits are covered by separate laws, which include protections for domestic partners.
The ruling applies only to business dealings that have occurred since the new domestic partners law took effect Jan. 1. About 27,000 couples are on the state's domestic partner registry. Most are gay men and lesbians, although unmarried heterosexual couples with one partner at least 62 years old also can register.
Monday's ruling did not address same-sex marriage, an issue that the court is expected to decide in a different case in several months. But the court's reasoning in the country club decision could undercut the argument that a ban on gay marriage amounts to discrimination, said University of Santa Clara Law Professor Gerald Uelmen, an expert on the state high court.
"It does not bode well for same-sex marriage," Uelmen said.
