Dive Brief:
- Two LGBT-supportive litigation groups filed a class action lawsuit on Tuesday against retail giant Walmart on behalf of the company’s employees who were denied health insurance benefits for their legally married same-sex spouses up until Jan. 1, 2014, according to the Washington Blade.
- The Boston-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
- The suit charges that Walmart violated Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Massachusetts Fair Employment Practices Law by discriminating against the lead plaintiff, Jacqueline Cote, based on her sex.
Dive Insight:
Walmart ended its ban on health benefits for its employees’ same-sex spouses on Jan. 1, 2014, says the Blade. But the lawsuit filed on behalf of Cote and other Walmart employees who may join the class action suit calls for the company to compensate them for damages they have suffered due to the denied benefits.
Cote told reporters during a telephone news conference that as a longtime employee of Walmart’s Swansea, Mass., store, she applied for spousal health insurance benefits for her wife shortly after the couple married in 2004, when the state legalized same-sex marriage. She said the company informed her that while it provided health benefits to opposite-sex spouses it had a policy of not providing those same benefits for legally married same-sex spouses. Cote said she and her wife, Diana “Dee” Smithson, struggled to pay for a separate health insurance policy for Smithson up until 2012, when the policy was cancelled.
The Blade reports that a short time later Smithson was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and she incurred thousands of dollars in medical bills while uninsured. During much of Smithson's cancer treatments she was uninsured and the couple amassed over $175,000 in unpaid medical bills of that period when she was without insurance until 2014, when Wal-Mart finally allowed associates to provide medical insurance for their same-sex spouse.
