AZ Appeals Court upholds SS benefits

[azulai]

Reuters: Appeals court upholds same-sex benefits in Arizona

A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that Arizona must continue for now to provide health care benefits to same-sex partners of state government workers.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a temporary block on a controversial 2009 state law that sought to strip health coverage for gay and lesbian domestic partners of Arizona employees.

In a 13-page opinion, the three-member appeals panel said such a law would go against the long-standing constitutional right to equal protection.

A New York-based legal advocacy group hailed the ruling as a major victory for same sex couples.

"Today's decision ... means Arizona's lesbian and gay state employees will not suddenly find themselves without vital family health coverage," said Tara Borelli, a Lambda Legal attorney who argued the case before the court.

The group represented seven of the nine state workers who filed suit against the law in November 2009, two months after Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill. The bill was part of drastic cuts made to balance the state's budget.

The state employees claimed in the suit that the law violated their due process and equal protection rights and won a temporary stay from a federal court until it could decide on the suit.

It was not until 2008 that same-sex partners were eligible for the same health coverage as their opposite sex partners in Arizona. Former Governor Janet Napolitano granted these individuals the benefits through an executive order.

Brewer spokesman Matt Benson said the appeals court opinion "flies in the face of logic and the law" and grants more benefits to same-sex partners than straight couples.

"In the governor's opinion, this is a step in the wrong direction," he said.

Benson said the governor is studying the ruling and has not yet made a decision on an appeal.

[fredv3b]

From what I've read, the court effectively said, that although the State of Arizona did not have to provide benefits to same-sex couples once it did it couldn't take them away unless it took them away from married couples too.

Is that understanding correct, if so it seems rather odd to me. If it was acceptable not to have provided benefits in the first place, why not now?

[azulai]

I think the ruling is based on the governor singling out one particular group and cutting their benefits.

If it was acceptable not to have provided benefits in the first place, why not now?

Understanding this stuff/law is always difficult for me. :redface: I'm not familiar with AZ law/politics but could it be that since domestic partnerships are now recognized the dynamics are changed? Just guessing. :tongue:

[azulai]

Adding this here because it's of similar topic. It's disappointing news.

Think Progress: Michigan State House Votes To Eliminate Domestic Partnership Benefits

Michigan state House voted yesterday [September 15, 2011] to prohibit public employers from offering taxpayer-paid health insurance to domestic partners living with public employees. The measure now moves to the Republican-controlled Senate. “Democrats who opposed the legislation say it is unconstitutional and would be challenged in court. They say public universities have the constitutional authority to determine their own policies, and that the Michigan Civil Service Commission has the power to make decisions about what kinds of benefits are offered to many state employees.”

To me, it seems that in most states once the Republicans control the state legislature they will eliminate domestic partnership benefits if previously granted, and try to amend that state's constitution to ban ss marriage.

think progress New Hampshire House Committee Approves Bill To Repeal Same-Sex Marriage

A subcommittee of the New Hampshire House will consider two bills to repeal the state’s 2009 same-sex marriage law, the Associated Press is reporting, and will likely move the measures to the House for a vote early next year. The legislature took up three separate repeal bills — which would not impact existing same-sex marriages, but prohibit new unions — last year, but postponed the question to focus on economic issues. A poll from February found that 62 percent of New Hampshire voters are opposed to repealing the marriage law.

It's a constant seesaw.

[fredv3b]

When will traditional Republicans take their party back from the religious right?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[azulai]

Fred, I thought you might like Maureen Dowd's latest column: Egghead and Blockheads. :tongue:

NY Times, published September 17, 2011:

THERE are two American archetypes that were sometimes played against each other in old Westerns.

The egghead Eastern lawyer who lacks the skills or stomach for a gunfight is contrasted with the tough Western rancher and ace shot who has no patience for book learnin’.

The duality of America’s creation story was vividly illustrated in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” the 1962 John Ford Western.

Jimmy Stewart is the young attorney who comes West to Shinbone and ends up as a U.S. senator after gaining fame for killing the sadistic outlaw Liberty Valance, played by Lee Marvin. John Wayne is the rancher, a fast-draw Cyrano who hides behind a building and actually shoots Marvin because he knows Stewart is hopeless in a duel. He does it even though they’re in love with the same waitress, who chooses the lawyer because he teaches her to read.

A lifetime later, on the verge of becoming a vice presidential candidate, Stewart confesses the truth to a Shinbone newspaperman, who refuses to print it. “When the legend becomes fact,” the editor says, “print the legend.”

At the cusp of the 2012 race, we have a classic cultural collision between a skinny Eastern egghead lawyer who’s inept in Washington gunfights and a pistol-totin’, lethal-injectin’, square-shouldered cowboy who has no patience for book learnin’.

Rick Perry, from the West Texas town of Paint Creek, is no John Wayne, even though he has a ton of executions notched on his belt. But he wears a pair of cowboy boots with the legend “Liberty” stitched on one. (As in freedom, not Valance.) He plays up the effete-versus-mesquite stereotypes in his second-grade textbook of a manifesto, “Fed Up!”

Trashing Massachusetts, he writes: “They passed state-run health care, they have sanctioned gay marriage, and they elected Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Barney Frank repeatedly — even after actually knowing about them and what they believe! Texans, on the other hand, elect folks like me. You know the type, the kind of guy who goes jogging in the morning, packing a Ruger .380 with laser sights and loaded with hollow-point bullets, and shoots a coyote that is threatening his daughter’s dog.”

At a recent campaign event in South Carolina, Perry grinned, “I’m actually for gun control — use both hands.”

Traveling to Lynchburg, Va., to speak to students at Liberty University (as in Falwell, not Valance), Perry made light of his bad grades at Texas A&M.

Studying to be a veterinarian, he stumbled on chemistry and made a D one semester and an F in another. “Four semesters of organic chemistry made a pilot out of me,” said Perry, who went on to join the Air Force.

“His other D’s,” Richard Oppel wrote in The Times, “included courses in the principles of economics, Shakespeare, ‘Feeds & Feeding,’ veterinary anatomy and what appears to be a course called ‘Meats.’ ”

He even got a C in gym.

Perry conceded that he “struggled” with college, and told the 13,000 young people in Lynchburg that in high school, he had graduated “in the top 10 of my graduating class — of 13.”

It’s enough to make you long for W.’s Gentleman’s C’s. At least he was a mediocre student at Yale. Even Newt Gingrich’s pseudo-intellectualism is a relief at this point.

Our education system is going to hell. Average SAT scores are falling, and America is slipping down the list of nations for college completion. And Rick Perry stands up with a smirk to talk to students about how you can get C’s, D’s and F’s and still run for president.

The Texas governor did help his former chief of staff who went to lobby for a pharmaceutical company that donated to Perry, so he at least knows the arithmetic of back scratching.

Perry told the students, “God uses broken people to reach a broken world.” What does that even mean?

The Republicans are now the “How great is it to be stupid?” party. In perpetrating the idea that there’s no intellectual requirement for the office of the presidency, the right wing of the party offers a Farrelly Brothers “Dumb and Dumber” primary in which evolution is avant-garde.

Having grown up with a crush on William F. Buckley Jr. for his sesquipedalian facility, it’s hard for me to watch the right wing of the G.O.P. revel in anti-intellectualism and anti-science cant.

Sarah Palin, who got outraged at a “gotcha” question about what newspapers and magazines she read, is the mother of stupid conservatism. Another “Don’t Know Much About History” Tea Party heroine, Michele Bachmann, seems rather proud of not knowing anything, simply repeating nutty, inflammatory medical claims that somebody in the crowd tells her.

So we’re choosing between the overintellectualized professor and blockheads boasting about their vacuity?

The occupational hazard of democracy is know-nothing voters. It shouldn’t be know-nothing candidates.

My opinion: America is definitely the nation of "lower expectations."

[zeon]

i get confused in american politics because states have different rules whereas the uk has one throughout the land

[Inchante]

My opinion: America is definitely the nation of "lower expectations."

Azulai, I enjoyed the article you posted and think Dowd is certainly channeling two significant threads of the American Mythos. Unfortunately, she does not develop or look past the most basic aspects of those archetypes, or even examine the history or origins of them.

The farmer/rancher is definitely the product and remains an aspect of American Populism, the rugged individual, the tamer of the west. . . and for that matter, the east.

The eastern lawyer archetype is a product of New England's historical educational prowess, which actually has far more to do with religious Puritanism than it does science. The Puritans were the most educated people in the Americas during their day. They were the first to write books (religious tracts), the first to establish American publishing, and the first to develop Universities in the colonies.


On the other hand, she does miss out onfact that farmers and ranchers have historically been fairly well educated people in the United States. John Adams (also a lawyer), Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington to name just a few of the founding fathers who were also farmers and well educated men.

On the other hand, scientists and entrepreneurs like Thomas Edison (kicked out of school) and J.D. Rockefeller were not well educated men at all. Even Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dropped out of college.

Anyway, Dawd begins with certain suppositions that are illustrative of the very type of elitism conservatives rebel against: the belief that you have to have an ivy league degree in order to be intelligent, the belief that if you are a farmer from Texas, you are ignorant, the belief that if you are conservative, you are inherently stupid. If people like Dawd could manage to get past their own feelings of superiority, and reach across and value those who may not have the education but have the brains, we may not be in the situation we are now . . . where conservatives will seek out anyone who doesn't look down their nose at people who has a different background from their own.

There is a lot of stupidity in America at this time, perhaps more than at any other time in its history. But that has nothing to do with our literacy rate, our scientists, our businessmen and women, or even our politicians. It has everything to do with the fact that people, more than ever, are talking past each other rather than to each other.

Anyway, that is my take on what is behind our current political situation.

[azulai]

I enjoyed reading your reply, Inchante.

If people like Dawd could manage to get past their own feelings of superiority, and reach across and value those who may not have the education but have the brains, we may not be in the situation we are now . . . where conservatives will seek out anyone who doesn't look down their nose at people who has a different background from their own.

I'm kind of confused by this statement. I guess I don't see conservative Republicans as welcoming of people of different backgrounds. Am I mistaken about their less than inclusive views on immigration, and LGBTQ persons?

I find conservatives the ones with feelings of superiority. The smirk and righteousness that I see in people like Bachman, Palin, Perry, John Boehner and George W. Bush permeate the party.

I read this article, I'd have to find it if you are interested, about Perry meeting some businessmen from Mexico. The person described how Perry kept saying "bidness" and was basically condensing the entire time to the two people from Mexico. At the end you learn one of the Mexican businessmen had attended Harvard Business School and was quite shocked at the level of unprofessionalism he had just experienced.

I'm just not into the good old boy attitude. I don't respect that attitude nor do I want to associate with it. There is also a lack of respect for science and for those of us who are not Christian. I think it is American conservative Republicans who think the international world is "ignorant" and "inherently stupid." I think conservative Republicans lack respect for and look down their noses at other cultures and customs. I don't want to return to the swagger days of G. W. Bush.

So, unless the "conservatives" provide a candidate that respects ALL life, lives compassionately, respects the sovereignty of other countries, and has some basic understanding of science, I guess I will turn my nose up.

I really don't have enough time to respond well or much. I'm working on that education that while not Ivy League, is Public Ivy. Politics are an interest but I'm sorely lacking in the area, so I'm sorry if my reply is a little disjointed or even stupid. These are just my thoughts.

Peace.

[OrphanPip]

On the other hand, she does miss out onfact that farmers and ranchers have historically been fairly well educated people in the United States. John Adams (also a lawyer), Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington to name just a few of the founding fathers who were also farmers and well educated men.

I think it is a misrepresentation of context to refer to wealthy landowners as "farmers" as we generally use the word. The New England landowners are comparable to the landed gentry in England, they were wealthy and thus educated. However, the farmer being described in the above article is the homesteader, the pioneer rather than the wealthy educated landowner, who never did any actual farming with his own hands.