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LOU CHIBBARO J
Friday, July 18, 2008
An official with the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, acting on behalf of Mayor Adrian Fenty, startled gay activists last week by arguing that a domestic partnership bill pending before the City Council would give “unusual” and “unprecedented” parental rights to same-sex couples, jeopardizing federal funding for the city’s child support programs.
In written testimony submitted to a City Council committee, Tonya A. Sapp, director of legislative affairs for the Attorney General’s Office, said her office has “significant concern” that Bill 17-727, the Domestic Partnership Judicial Determination of Parentage Act of 2008, violates a federal law pertaining to city child support programs and could result in federal sanctions against important city programs that benefit children.
But nationally recognized gay rights attorney and American University law professor Nancy Polikoff said Sapp’s five-page written statement raising objections to the domestic partners bill “demonstrates an astonishing ignorance” of same-sex civil union and domestic partnership laws in other states.
According to Polikoff, civil union and domestic partnership laws in states like Vermont and Connecticut, among others, provide the same parental rights provisions for same-sex couples that the D.C. Council bill would provide.
“No ill effects on federal funding or conflicts in federal guidelines have occurred in any of these other states,” Polikoff said.
News of Sapp’s written remarks on the pending D.C. domestic partnership law surfaced at a July 10 hearing on the bill called by D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large), who chairs the Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety. Mendelson and Council members Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) and Carol Schwartz (R-At-Large) co-introduced the bill.
Polikoff and other witnesses, including local gay rights attorney Michelle Zavos, domestic partnership advocate Bob Summersgill, and Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance Vice President Rick Rosendall, testified in support of the bill during the hearing.
Polikoff said she would contact Sapp and offer to provide a briefing for the Attorney General’s Office on developments in same-sex family law over the past two decades, when same-sex parental rights have expanded significantly in many states.
“What’s troubling is they describe as unprecedented things that are not unprecedented,” Polikoff said. “The bottom line is there is no problem with this proposed law. There is no conflict with federal law.”
Local activists said Sapp’s written testimony was troubling because it marked the first time in nearly a decade that a representative of a D.C. mayor has raised objections to any of more than a dozen domestic partnership bills that have come before the Council. All have passed by lopsided margins, with most passing unanimously.
In his testimony before Mendelson’s committee on June 10, Summersgill said the parental rights DP bill pending before the Council and one other DP bill before the Council would complete a decade-long effort to provide registered domestic partners “legal parity with marriage under D.C. law.”
The second bill Summersgill referred to is Bill 17-726, the Domestic Partnership Police and Fire Amendment Act of 2008. The measure would amend an existing city employee benefits and disability law to provide retirement and survivor’s benefits for domestic partners of police officers and fire fighters.
In her written message to Mendelson’s committee, Sapp said the Office of the Attorney General supports Bill 17-726.
Alan Heymann, a spokesperson for D.C. Attorney General Peter J. Nickles, said the attorney general’s office would continue to research the domestic partner issues raised by Polikoff and others at last week’s Council hearing and would soon respond to their concerns.
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