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LOU CHIBBARO, JR.
Friday, January 06, 2006
The District's far-reaching domestic partnership bill is on its way to Congress for approval, but a battle of historic proportions may be brewing.
The D.C. Council on Wednesday gave its final approval to the bill that provides an unprecedented set of marriage-like benefits and obligations to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples, as well as unmarried blood relatives, who live in the District.
Mayor Anthony Williams is expected to sign the bill in about 10 days and then send it to Capitol Hill, where it must undergo a required congressional review period of 30 legislative days.
City Hall observers are hopeful the bill, the Domestic Partnership Equality Act of 2005, won't trigger opposition from Congress similar to years past, when senators and representatives opposed to gay rights killed several gay-related bills that were approved by the City Council.
Since the 30-day review period applies only to "legislative" days, it usually takes about three months to complete the review process, assuming no one objects. Congress rarely holds legislative sessions more than three days per week.
Under city rules, a member of the Senate or House objecting to a D.C. bill can introduce a resolution of disapproval. But even the disapproval resolution must go through the normal legislative process, including committee hearings and committee approval in the House and Senate followed by approval by the full Senate and House.
The president also must sign the disapproval resolution before it takes effect and voids the D.C. bill it targets.
Sen. Paul Strauss, the unpaid "shadow" senator elected by D.C. residents to lobby Congress, said the disapproval resolution process has not been invoked in more than 20 years. Instead, Strauss said, Congress has blocked or killed proposed D.C. bills in recent years through amendments attached to the city's annual congressional appropriations bill.
Strauss and others familiar with the disapproval resolution process said the appropriations route is easier because Congress must approve an appropriations bill to fund the city government.
Members of Congress who support gay rights can stall a disapproval resolution until the review period runs out, making it much more difficult to kill the bill, Strauss said.
Strauss said the domestic partners bill arrives on Capitol Hill a little more than a month after Congress approved the city's appropriations bill for fiscal year 2006. The next appropriations bill is not scheduled for consideration until next October or November.
"This puts us in good shape for the next several months," he said.
While he said that he is unaware of any effort by members of the House or Senate to derail the domestic partners bill, Strauss said Congress' sweeping authority over D.C. affairs allows it to pass a bill overturning a
District bill any time it wishes.
"If Congress really wants to stop it, it can," he said.
The domestic partners measure, introduced last February by Councilmember Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large), grants full inheritance rights to same-sex and opposite-sex couples who register with the city as domestic partners by recognizing each partner and the partners' children as legal heirs.
The bill also provides immunity from testifying against a partner in civil or criminal proceedings, gives legal standing to sue for negligence in a wrongful death case, and allows couples to make legally binding "pre-marital" agreements.
In addition, the legislation requires partners to provide alimony and child support payments in the event a couple separates and dissolves the domestic partnership. It holds each partner responsible for the others' debts associated with home mortgages and other property holdings.
In other action, the Council gave final approval to three other gay-related bills, including a measure adding domestic partnership benefits not included in the Mendelson bill.
The Health Care Benefits Expansion Amendment Act of 2005, introduced by Councilmembers Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3) and Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), allows partners of D.C. government employees to receive city health insurance benefits at the same cost as employees married spouses.
Under the current law, domestic partners must pay 100 percent of the monthly premium compared to 25 percent of the premium paid by married spouses.
The Council also passed on final reading a bill making the Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Affairs a permanent part of the city government. Williams created the office last year by executive order.
Another bill approved on final reading amends the city's Human Rights Act to add stronger, anti-discrimination protections for transgender residents.
The alimony, child support, and debt provisions in the Mendelson bill mark the first time the city has added marriage-like obligations to its domestic partners law. The city's existing DP law, which took effect in 2002, provides limited benefits, including health insurance coverage for partners of D.C. government employees, with little significant obligations.
Some activists questioned whether the city's approximately 550 couples who registered as domestic partners under the existing, more limited statute should be responsible for a set of new obligations they knew nothing about at the time they registered with the city's Office of Vital Records.
Mendelson said he and his Council colleagues considered and rejected a possible "dual" option approach that would allow partners that registered under the existing law to be exempt from the new obligations. Such an approach would be too cumbersome to administer, Mendelson said.
He said the Council would direct the Vital Records office to notify all registered domestic partners about the upcoming changes in advance of the law becoming effective. Those who find the new obligations unacceptable have the option of terminating their partnerships, Mendelson said.
Mendelson said the bill received widespread community support during a public hearing held earlier this year.
But the bill retains potentially controversial provisions from the city's existing DP law that makes it stand out among the domestic partner laws in other states and cities - allowing blood relatives to join as domestic partners. Some have predicted the provisions could draw opposition in Congress.
D.C. and Hawaii are the only two jurisdictions to include a blood relative provision in the DP laws. Hawaii's law does not include alimony and child support obligations.
The D.C. law's provision allowing opposite-sex couples to register as domestic partners and to receive the same benefits and obligations as same-sex couples makes D.C., Hawaii, and Maine the only jurisdictions to allow across-the-board partner registration for opposite-sex couples, although Hawaii and Maine do not include alimony and child support obligations.
Other states, like California and New Jersey, limit opposite-sex registrations to couples where at least one of the partners is 62 or older.
In Wednesday's action, the Council approved the bill by placing it on its consent calendar, a procedure that resulted in its passage by unanimous voice vote without debate.
Many gay activists hailed the development, noting that it shows the legislation enjoys overwhelming support by all 13 members of the Council.
Although a congressional disapproval resolution is unlikely, upon Williams' signature, the bill goes to Capitol Hill at a time when the Republican-controlled Congress has continued to pass amendments each year to the D.C. appropriations bill blocking the city from implementing laws that members of Congress find objectionable.
Among them is an amendment that prohibits the city from enforcing a decision by the D.C. Human Rights Commission that declared the Boy Scouts of America's policy of banning gay scouts and scout leaders a violation of the city's Human Rights Act. The ruling, which the congressional amendment voided, ordered the Scouts to stop what the commission called a practice of discrimination against gays.
Other congressional amendments adopted during the past several years prohibit the city from implementing a needle-exchange program aimed at curtailing the spread of HIV among intravenous drug abusers and block the city from adopting an initiative passed by D.C. voters that legalized medical marijuana for the treatment of certain diseases, including AIDS.
One of Congress' most notorious uses of the disapproval process came in 1981, when it overturned a D.C. sexual assault reform bill that called for repealing the city's sodomy law. At the time, Rev. Jerry Falwell, at the peak of his influence in the conservative religious movement, denounced the bill as an assault on the morals of the nation's capital.
The House voted to disapprove the bill by a wide margin at a time when only one house of Congress was needed to invoke the disapproval to overturn a D.C. bill. The Supreme Court later ruled that a one-house "veto" of D.C. bills was unconstitutional, forcing Congress to adopt its current system of killing D.C. bills through approval by both houses and obtaining a presidential signature.
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