Prosser couple claims reverse discrimination

PROSSER, Wash. -- Sharleen Honeycutt needs to see a doctor.

She has just finished radiation treatments for breast cancer and has yet to make follow-up appointments for blood tests, ultrasounds or mammograms.

She said she can't afford it. Her domestic partner's employer won't pay medical benefits because they are not gay.

"Because I'm not a guy," Honeycutt said.

Honeycutt lives with Charles Weems, a pipefitter at Battelle's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland. He has worked for the company 32 years, though he is currently out on a disability claim.

They have filed state and federal human rights complaints for "reverse discrimination."

Battelle has denied violating any federal or state law, said Staci West, a Battelle spokeswoman. The company only extends medical benefits to same-sex domestic partners because they "have no other legal way to obtain health care benefits," West said.

It's an issue that pops up from time to time across the country as states pass domestic partnership laws that, for the most part, are aimed to protect gay and lesbian couples.

This year the Washington Legislature is debating whether to expand rights for domestic partners. The Senate has passed a bill, nicknamed "Everything But Marriage," while the House of Representatives has yet to vote.

But opposite-sex couples sometimes choose not to marry, said Nicky Grist, executive director of Alternatives to Marriage Project, a national nonprofit that lobbies against what it views as discrimination against unmarried people.

"People aren't married for such a wide range of reasons," Grist said.

Several times across the country, employees with different-sex domestic partners have sued their employers for offering benefits only to same-sex domestic partners, Grist said. None of them have won.

It is common for cases to crop up among senior heterosexual couples who stand to lose Social Security benefits if they marry.

That's where Weems, now 63, and Honeycutt, now 70, come in.

They met in 2003 and moved into Honeycutt's home north of Prosser the next year.

They thought about getting married but Honeycutt would have lost her monthly Social Security payment from her late husband, who died in 1997.

The couple took up the dilemma with Battelle.

They claimed Battelle officials agreed to extend medical benefits to Honeycutt as long as the couple registered as domestic partners with the city of Olympia. They did.

At the time, the state of Washington did not keep such a registry.

In 2007, the Legislature created domestic partnership laws, granting same-sex couples some of the legal benefits of marriage. It also extended the same option to opposite-sex couples over the age of 62, specifically to let them avoid the loss in Social Security payments.

Since then, more than 5,000 couples have registered with the state. There's no way to tell which are straight and which are gay other than making a guess based on their first names, said Dave Ammons, a spokesman for the secretary of state.

Weems and Honeycutt never registered with the state, because they were receiving medical benefits at that time. "There was no reason to do anything different," Honeycutt says.

Also, that same year, Honeycutt was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had surgery in October 2007, then started a course of 30 radiation treatments that lasted until this January.

In late 2007, the company warned its employees that different-sex partners would stop receiving medical benefits on Dec. 31, 2008.

West called it "a business decision that weighed several factors, including how it impacted our ability to offer benefits overall to our staff. And so we chose to offer that benefit only to same-sex registered domestic partners."

It had nothing to do with where the couple is registered, West said.

In February, Weems and Honeycutt filed a discrimination complaint with the state Human Rights Commission and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission because Battelle is a federal contractor.

They seek their benefits back and an unspecified amount of punitive damages, says Robert Evans, a Grandview consultant who specializes in state and federal compliance issues.

"(Battelle) violated state law, blatantly," he said.

They are prepared to file a lawsuit if needed, Evans said.

Weems said he knows of three other opposite-sex couples in the same predicament.

Meanwhile, Honeycutt has been putting off medical appointments for four months hoping for her medical coverage back.

"I just haven't done it," she said.

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.

EDITOR'S NOTE -- The story has been updated to correct Honeycutt as the speaker in the story's first quote.