The California Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage raises workplace issues that companies need to consider, even though last week's ruling will have little direct effect on employee benefits, legal experts say.
California's domestic partnership law, as well as statutory bans on discrimination based on marital status and sexual orientation, already requires businesses to provide virtually the same state-regulated benefits to gay couples on their payrolls as they do to employees who are in opposite-sex unions.
Even if it doesn't affect how benefits are doled out, however, introducing a new definition of marriage is something employers must take into account, said William C. Thomas III, a Los Angeles attorney with the firm of Seyfarth Shaw.
"Employers will need to be mindful of how this shift in California law, as it pertains to gay marriage, might impact policies and procedures that are already in place," Thomas said.
For example, businesses that have traditionally allowed just-married employees to take time off for their honeymoon would have to extend that benefit to same-sex couples, Thomas said.
"In many cases, it may not involve a policy change" by the company, he said. "It may just be a matter of how individuals are treated under existing policy."
The ruling could also raise interstate employment issues. For example, what if a company in a state that bans gay marriage has employees in California?
"If an out-of-state company has a benefit plan and it defines the people getting it as 'employee and spouse,' then a person in a marriage by a same-sex couple in California would get the benefit," said Jon Davidson, legal director of Lambda Legal, a nonprofit advocacy organization on gay civil rights issues. "That person is legally the spouse here, so it would apply."
Davidson said such cases came up in Massachusetts after that state legalized gay marriage in 2004. As far as he knows, no company has refused to pay the benefit.
Crucially, the California ruling applies only to benefits covered by state law, such as family leave provisions, Medi-Cal coverage and workers' compensation insurance.
Federally regulated benefits, including Social Security, payments to survivors of military veterans and tax advantages, are not affected. The federal Defense of Marriage Act, which restricts wedlock to opposite sex-couples, trumps California law in this regard.
