Wal-Mart sued for denying health insurance to gay worker's wife

A Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) employee sued the retailer on Tuesday, saying its prior policy of denying health insurance to the spouses of gay employees violated gender discrimination laws.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, seeks nationwide class-action status.

Wal-Mart, the largest private U.S. employer, began offering health insurance benefits to same-sex spouses last year, after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act that denied federal benefits to married gay couples. Even after that change, the lawsuit says, Wal-Mart workers still live with the uncertainty of losing spousal coverage.

"Benefits provided by Wal-Mart as a matter of grace ... are not secure and could potentially be withdrawn just when large health care costs are incurred," the lawsuit says.

Jackie Cote, who has worked at Walmart stores in Maine and Massachusetts since 1999, said in the lawsuit that her wife, Diana Smithson, developed cancer in 2012 and the denial of insurance led to more than $150,000 in medical debt.

Cote and Smithson were married in Massachusetts in 2004, days after a court ruling made the state the first to allow gay nuptials.

Smithson worked for Wal-Mart until 2008, when she left to care for Cote's elderly mother, according to the lawsuit. The company then repeatedly denied requests by Cote to add her wife to her insurance policy. Smithson is now in hospice care, Cote said.

Last year, Cote filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a prerequisite to filing an employment discrimination lawsuit. The commission said in January that Wal-Mart violated gender discrimination laws by denying benefits to Smithson.

The commission in recent years has pioneered the argument that employment discrimination against gay people is a form of gender discrimination, since it would not happen if an employee were of the opposite sex, but it has not been vetted by courts.

Via: Reuters

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Now fix congressional redistricting

On this July Fourth, it is worth celebrating a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, lifting the smoke screen laid by John Boehner to stall action on plans to draw fair, competitive U.S. House districts in Ohio. The court upheld the right of Arizona voters to create an independent commission to draw U.S. House districts. It turned back a challenge from the Republican-dominated Arizona legislature, which wanted to regain control.

As House speaker, Boehner used his influence to cloud discussion in the Ohio legislature, also dominated by Republicans. The expressed concern was that the state should not move forward until the Arizona case was resolved. Actually, what is under discussion here would leave the legislature with a dominant role in the redistricting process, the parallel to Arizona a stretch, at best.

When the Arizona legislature sued, it took a narrow reading of the U.S. Constitution, which states that the “times, places and manner” of holding congressional elections “shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.”

What the lawsuit failed to consider was that Arizona voters, in initiating a constitutional amendment, were acting in place of the legislature. In a 5-4 decision, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg found the U.S. Constitution’s reference to the “legislature” included ballot measures such as the one Arizona voters passed in 2000 to create an independent commission.

It now is time for the Ohio legislature to repair how U.S. House districts are drawn here, using as its model a proposed constitutional amendment on state legislative districts that it has placed on the November ballot. Instead of state lawmakers drawing new U.S. House districts after each census, the job would go to the same commission that would be created for state legislative districts.

The seven-member body would be composed of the governor, auditor and secretary of state, plus four legislators, two from the minority party. With incentives to encourage bipartisan action and rules to minimize the splitting of communities, the state’s U.S. House districts would come into better balance.

As matters stand, districts created by the Republican-led legislature do not reflect the real balance of power between Republicans and Democrats. In a state where Barack Obama won twice, and which elected Sherrod Brown to the U.S. Senate, Republicans control 12 of 16 U.S. House seats. Without sufficient competition, extreme views easily can take hold.

In the state Senate, Frank LaRose, a Copley Township Republican, and Tom Sawyer, an Akron Democrat, have long worked on redistricting reform and are ready to introduce an amendment for U.S. House districts that would mirror the bipartisan plan for legislative districts. In the House, a similar idea has been introduced by two Democrats, Mike Curtin of Marble Cliff and Kathleen Clyde of Kent.

With lawmakers on summer break, action by the August deadline for placing another constitutional amendment on the fall ballot is unlikely. But once back in session, the legislature should make sure an amendment on U.S. House districts gets on the ballot next year. If lawmakers fail to act promptly, voter advocates should take charge with a petition drive.

Via: Ohio.com

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Support Grows for States to Ignore the Federal Courts

Following last week’s controversial U.S. Supreme Court rulings on Obamacare and gay marriage, voters believe more strongly that individual states should have the right to turn their backs on the federal courts.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 33% of Likely U.S. Voters now believe that states should have the right to ignore federal court rulings if their elected officials agree with them. That’s up nine points from 24% when we first asked this question in February.  Just over half (52%) disagree, down from 58% in the earlier survey. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Perhaps even more disturbing is that the voters who feel strongest about overriding the federal courts – Republicans and conservatives - are those who traditionally have been the most supportive of the Constitution and separation of powers. During the Obama years, however, these voters have become increasingly suspicious and even hostile toward the federal government.

Fifty percent (50%) of GOP voters now believe states should have the right to ignore federal court rulings, compared to just 22% of Democrats and 30% of voters not affiliated with either major party. Interestingly, this represents a noticeable rise in support among all three groups.

Fifty percent (50%) of conservative voters share this view, but just 27% of moderates and 15% of liberals agree.

Voters are closely divided in their opinions of both of last week’s major rulings. Negative views of the Supreme Court are at their highest level in nearly nine years of regular surveying. Positive opinions are also up to a less dramatic three-year high.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on June 30-July 1, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Earlier this year, 26% of voters told Rasmussen Reports that President Obama should have the right to ignore federal court rulings if they are standing in the way of actions he feels are important for the country. Forty-three percent (43%) of Democrats shared this belief, while 81% of Republicans and 67% of unaffiliated voters disagreed.

The more a voter approves of Obama’s performance, the more likely he or she is to say that states should not have the right to ignore the federal courts.

Higher income voters are more likely to oppose letting states ignore federal court rulings than those who earn less.

Support for ignoring the federal courts is up among most demographic groups, however.

Most voters have long believed that the Supreme Court justices have their own political agenda, and they still tend to feel that that agenda is more liberal than conservative.

A plurality (47%) of voters continues to believe the federal government has too much influence over state governments, and 54% think states should have the right to opt out of federal government programs that they don’t agree with.  Even more (61%) think states should have the right to opt out of federally mandated programs if the federal government doesn’t help pay for them.

The Declaration of Independence, the foundational document that Americans honor on the Fourth of July, says that governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed, but just 25% believe that to be true of the federal government today.

Only 20% now consider the federal government a protector of individual liberty.  Sixty percent (60%) see the government as a threat to individual liberty instead.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only. 

Please sign up for the Rasmussen Reports daily e-mail update (it’s free) or follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Let us keep you up to date with the latest public opinion news.

Via: Rasmussen Reports

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ENTIRE COUNTY CLERK OFFICE RESIGNS OVER SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

No same-sex marriage licenses are being issued in Decatur County, Tennessee, because the entire county clerk’s office has resigned following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

Decatur County Clerk Gwen Pope explained her decision to quit her elected post. “It’s for the glory of God. He’s going to get all the glory,” she told WBIR.

Pope asserted she would rather resign than submit to issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She and her two staff members, Sharon Bell and Mickey Butler, have all quit for the same reason. Their last day of work is July 14.

The TV station indicates the phone in the Decatur County Clerk Office “rang nonstop” as “[o]ver and over again, people praised the decision of the three workers who have decided to step down from their positions rather than hand out same-sex marriage licenses.”

Drew Baker of the Tennessee Equality Project said Decatur County is the only county in the state that has refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

Pope said she and her employees will all look for new jobs. “I honestly believe God will take care of us,” she said.

“These three ladies stood upon their beliefs and they stood upon their morals and no one can fault them,” said Scott King, a Decatur County resident. “Too often we as Christians don’t do that. It’s time we followed the lead of what they showed us.”

Kathy Parrish, who works in Decaturville, also praised the women.

“It (same-sex marriage) is wrong because it goes against the Bible and everything God intended for it to be,” Parrish said. “That wasn’t God’s plan. God’s plan was for men to be with women and women to be with men.

Via: Breitbart

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Somebody Call a Doctor! GOP Replacement for Obamacare Will Not Solve the Problem

In anticipation of the Supreme Court ruling of King v. Burwell in the next few days, Republicans are frantically trying to conjure up an alternative to Obamacare should the subsidies outlined in the case be deemed illegal. While the GOP should get an A for effort, if they don’t properly diagnose the reasons why the healthcare system needed “fixing” in the first place, the treatment regimen will be ineffectual at best, harmful at worst.

Most agree that the healthcare system had many problems before Obamacare, but couldn’t articulate why costs were out of control and not everyone could get coverage. My bold assertion is that programs like Medicaid and Medicare sowed the initial seeds of failure within the healthcare system years ago by artificially setting prices (in the form of reimbursement costs) of everything from drugs to equipment to services by government fiat instead of letting markets determine the price.

Just as government intervention in the economy distorts free market capitalism, government intervention in healthcare knocked that system out of whack. Since the prices that government sets for goods and services differ from the actual costs to the providers in the private market, those providers relying on government reimbursement had to raise their prices in order to make money and continue to operate. Once those initial goods and services had their true prices distorted, the price of everything else related followed suit, hence the upward cost spiral that has you paying $30 for an aspirin at the hospital and hundreds of thousands of dollars for a surgery. As providers asked for relief, in came more government “help” in the form of subsidies.

However, economics shows us that when you subsidize something, you invariably raise its price because you are artificially lowering the cost to the consumer and thus increasing demand. It contributes to a feedback loop that distorts the price of everything that set its price based on the value of the initial good. If the GOP alternative includes more subsidies, then they are not really attacking the root of the problem. They would simply be applying a band-aid that would eventually require another band-aid down the road, and then another, and then another.

Via: Human Events

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New Obamacare survey shows users love it, but can they keep it?

As the U.S. Supreme Court deliberates on a case that may very well undermine a central plank of Obamacare, the vast majority of people who have gained health coverage under the controversial program are happy with it, a new survey finds.

A total of 86 percent of people who are newly insured through private Obamacare health plans or Medicaid are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their coverage, according to the Commonwealth Fund report. (Tweet this)

That report, issued last week, also reveals that almost 7 out of every 10 adults who are newly insured through either Obamacare private plans or Medicaid have actually used it to get health care.

And more than 60 percent of those said they would have been unable to get or pay for that treatment without that new coverage, according to the survey.

They really, really like it

"The Affordable Care Act's coverage expansions have been in place for nearly 18 months, and indications are that the newly insured are pleased with their coverage and are using it to get needed health care," said Dr. David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund.

Yet the findings come as many of the newly insured are at risk of losing their health plans because of a pending Supreme Court case that could lead to federal financial aid for Obamacare insurance premiums being barred in 34 states.

Via: CNBC

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