The Issues:
Equal Benefits Ordinances

Family Medical Leave Act (Delegate Heather Mizeur)


Bill Summary: Requiring employers in the State that are subject to the federal Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 to provide specified leave to an eligible employee with respect to the eligible employee's brother, sister, grandparent, grandchild, or domestic partner and the son or daughter of the eligible employee's domestic partner; providing that an eligible employee who takes leave provided under the Act is entitled to specified protections and rights; etc.

Status: The bill has not yet been filed.

Tens of millions of working people have been able to take unpaid job-protected time away from work under the FMLA when they were faced with a serious medical issue or when they needed to care for a new baby. These protections should be available for domestic partners. The Family Medical Leave Act was a groundbreaking law that safeguards workers’ rights to keep their jobs and maintain their economic security when they need it most. This bill simply acknowledges that the need to care for a sick parent or the child of a domestic partner is equally important.

Equal Benefits Ordinances, or EBOs, prohibit a jurisdiction from doing business with companies that discriminate against families headed by same-sex couples.   An EBO states that companies that do business with a particular city, county or state must offer benefits to the domestic partners of their employees that are equal to the benefits offered to spouses of employees.  

The domestic partner benefits covered by EBOs can include bereavement leave, family medical leave, health and pension programs, life insurance, and relocation assistance, to name a few.  

EBOs guarantee that citizens are not subsidizing discriminatory workplace policies. Furthermore, they give businesses a positive incentive - public contracts -- for providing equal benefits.

Under an EBO, contractors may comply with the law by offering employee benefits that don't discriminate between spouses and domestic partners, offering no employee benefits based on marriage or domestic partnership, or having no employees. There are usually exemptions in place for contractors who provide emergency services.

EBOs are modeled after San Francisco's landmark 1997 law, which spurred virtually thousands of companies across the country to implement domestic partner benefits programs.

EBOs have a national impact.    Since cities and counties conduct business in a broad range of industries, they may attract contractors from every state in the nation.   This means that an employer contracting with San Francisco, for instance, may have employees in Minnesota. These employees in the Midwest may reap the benefits of a law implemented on the west coast.  

Five years after the EBO passed in San Francisco, compliant contractors could be found in at least 44 states, plus the District of Columbia, and in over 900 cities across the country.

While a 1998 U.S. District Court ruling changed the San Francisco law by allowing companies to limit their compliance geographically, the vast majority of companies complying with the San Francisco law elected not to discriminate in certain locales, but rather, to comply fully.

According to Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, the San Francisco law impacted legislation in California as well.   By prompting a surge in the number of employers offering domestic partner benefits, Kors said, the San Francisco Equal Benefits Ordinance played a key role in building a foundation for the dramatic expansion of California laws protecting the rights of domestic partners in that state. As of 2005, California will offer nearly all of the rights and benefits under state law to domestic partners that are currently available to spouses.

In addition, the state of California, with the 5th largest economy in the world, passed Assembly Bill 17 in fall of 2003. This legislation will implement a statewide Equal Benefits law for contracts of more than $100,000. The law will go into effect in 2007.  

EBOs are in place in a variety of cities and counties across the United States, including:

  • Seattle, Washington
  • King County, Washington
  • Tumwater, Washington
  • Minneapolis, Minnesota
  • Oakland, California
  • Berkeley, California
  • Los Angeles, California
  • San Mateo County, California
  • Portland, Maine

Broward County Florida enacted a provision in 1999 giving an advantage in bidding to businesses offering domestic partner benefits

Currently, no Maryland jurisdiction has an EBO in place.

For more information about this topic, an excellent resource is the City of San Francisco Human Rights Commission's 5-year report on their EBO.

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