129.3 Insurance coverage

A public employer, as defined by ch. 40, Stats., does not discriminate on the basis of marital status by limiting its married co-employees to one family health insurance policy. Motola v. LIRC, 219 Wis. 2d 589, 580 N.W.2d 297 (1998).

The employer decided that employees with “family coverage/including spouse” insurance coverage would have to contribute toward the cost of their health insurance. This did not constitute unlawful discrimination with respect to compensation based on marital status. For budgetary reasons, the Respondent was only willing to allot a certain sum of money toward health insurance expenses. The Respondent was willing to pay up to a certain amount for all employees, whether single or married. It is a general fact of life that an insurance plan for family coverage will cost more than one for single coverage. The Complainant would be in the same situation if the Respondent provided no health insurance benefits at all and she was required to obtain it on her own. She would have to pay more to obtain family insurance coverage than a non-married person who only needed single coverage. Demet v. Homeward Bound (LIRC, 04/09/98).

It was not unlawful discrimination on the basis of marital status for the Respondent to prohibit employees from electing a health insurance plan which covered their spouse as a dependent if the spouse was also an employee of the Respondent. Employees of the Respondent who were married to one another were each entitled to their own insurance coverage. The limitations on the options allowed to the Respondent’s employees who were married to one another are designed to avoid a situation in which the employer actually purchases coverage twice for the same employee. Ohm v. Veltus (LIRC, 01/10/97).

It was not unlawful discrimination on the basis of marital status for the Group Insurance Board to deny a state employee’s application for family coverage under the State Group Health Insurance Program on the ground that the employee’s wife, also a State employee, already had family coverage under the State’s Health Care Insurance Program. Kozich v. Employee Trust Funds Bd., 203 Wis. 2d 363, 553 N.W.2d 830 (Ct. App. 1996).

The Respondent’s limitation on the selection criteria for its alternative health care plans to married couples when both spouses were city employees, did not constitute prohibited marital status discrimination. The Respondent, a municipality, prohibited the election of a single and/or family coverage plan by either husband or wife if he or she was covered as a dependent on their spouse’s family coverage plan. Genther v. City of Kenosha (LIRC, 07/31/96).

The employer’s policy was discrimination on the basis of marital status where married employees whose spouses had other insurance available to them through their employer had to either satisfy the Respondent that the other insurance provided significantly less coverage or that their spouses had dropped their insurance policy in order to be able to continue coverage with the Respondent’s health insurance policy. The Respondent’s policy discriminates against married employees by treating them differently with respect to health insurance than single employees who are not forced to choose between the district’s coverage and other health insurance they may have from another source. Braatz v. LIRC, 174 Wis. 2d 286, 496 N.W.2d 597 (1993).

The Respondent did not discriminate against the Complainant on the basis of marital status when it denied her application for family health insurance coverage for her lesbian companion. Although single and married employees are treated differently under the health insurance benefits scheme in that dependent coverage is available to a married worker’s spouse, this kind of differentiation on the basis of marital status does not violate the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act. Despite the fact that the Complainant regards her lesbian companion as her “spouse equivalent” this does not make her similarly situated to a married employee since the Complainant has no legal relationship to her companion. Phillips v. Wis. Pers. Comm’n, 167 Wis. 2d 205, 482 N.W.2d 121 (Ct. App. 1992).

The Respondent did not deny health insurance coverage to the Complainant because of her marital status. The Complainant did not receive the insurance coverage because she chose coverage under her spouse’s insurance policy instead. Dacquisto v. Fred Knapp Engraving (LIRC, 11/30/90).

The employer did not violate the prohibition on discrimination because of marital status when it paid employees who received family (individual plus dependent) health insurance a higher gross wage rate than employees who received only individual health insurance. The legislature simply did not intend that the prohibition against marital status discrimination would preclude an employer from providing additional or greater health insurance benefits to its employees with spouses and/or dependents than to its employees without dependents. Hartman v. Mueller Food Servs. (LIRC, 09/10/85), aff’d, Washington Co. Cir. Ct., 07/18/86.

The failure of an employer’s insurance plan to extend coverage to a divorced employee’s children does not constitute marital status discrimination. Bourque v. Wausau Med. Ctr. (LIRC, 02/10/84).