Domestic Partnership
Senate Bill 283, legislation creating domestic partnerships in which unmarried couples–both same-sex couples and different-sex couples–would have most of the rights of married couples was sponsored by openly gay Democratic Senator David Parks of Las Vegas. To attract support he modified his original draft so that the legislation exempted both private and public employers from having to provide health care benefits to their employees' domestic partners. It passed the Senate on April 21,2009, on a 12-9 vote. The Nevada Assembly passed the legislation 26–14 on May 15. Neither house of the legislature had passed the bill with the two-thirds vote needed to override the governor's veto. On May 25, Republican Governor Jim Gibbons vetoed the legislation. In his veto message he wrote: "I believe because the voters have determined that the rights of marriage should apply only to married couples, only the voters should determine whether those rights should equally apply to domestic partners."
On May 30, the Senate overrode the governor's veto on a 14-7 vote. The Assembly overrode the veto the next day on a 28-14 vote. The law took effect on October 1, 2009.
The Domestic Partnership Responsibilities Act provides many of the state-level rights, responsibilities, obligations, entitlements and benefits of marriage under the name domestic partnership. They differ from marriage in failing to qualify as marriages for federal government purposes and in lacking a requirement that businesses and governments provide health benefits to the domestic partners of their employees if they do so for the spouses of their married employees. However, on June 26, 2013, the United States Supreme Court ruled on United States v. Windsor, which challenged the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The Court declared DOMA unconstitutional, reasoning that it violates the protections of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment, which "makes that Fifth Amendment right all the more specific and all the better preserved and understood". Because of the Court's ruling in United States v. Windsor, federal government benefits are extended to same-sex couples and their children in states where same-sex marriage is legalized. The Domestic Partnership Responsibilities Act would now fail to qualify domestic partnerships as marriages only for the purpose of requiring businesses and governments to provide the health benefits stated above because of the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Windsor.
Nevada domestic partnerships differ from marriage in that a couple forming a domestic partnership must share a common residence. Domestic partners must be at least 18 years old, the same age required for marriage. While someone who wishes to marry can do so at age 16 with the consent of one parent, no comparable exception is provided for someone who wishes to enter into a domestic partnership before the age of 18.
Some rights provided by a Nevada domestic partnership are:
- Hospital visitation, health care decision–making, and information–access rights
- Inheritance rights, including the right to administer the estate of an intestate domestic partner, and Business succession rights
- Rights regarding cemetery plots, disposition of remains, anatomical donations, and ordering of autopsies
- A surviving domestic partner may bring a wrongful death action based on the death of the other partner
- Community property, domestic violence and testimonial privileges rules apply
- Dissolution laws apply (with only a few exceptions)
- Domestic partners may sue on behalf of the community
- Certain property transfers between partners are not taxed
- State veterans benefits apply
- Appointed and elected officials' domestic partners are subject to the same laws and regulations that apply to officials’ spouses
- Employment benefits, including sick leave to care for a domestic partner; wages and benefits when a domestic partner is injured, and to unpaid wages upon the death of a domestic partner; unemployment and disability insurance benefits; workers' compensation coverage
- Insurance rights, including rights under group policies, policy rights after the death of a domestic partner, conversion rights and continuing coverage rights
- Rights related to adoption, child custody and child support
Read more about this topic: Recognition Of Same-sex Unions In Nevada
Famous quotes containing the words domestic and/or partnership:
“I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within it, nowhere does she enjoy a higher station. And ... if anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“Nevertheless, no school can work well for children if parents and teachers do not act in partnership on behalf of the children’s best interests. Parents have every right to understand what is happening to their children at school, and teachers have the responsibility to share that information without prejudicial judgment.... Such communication, which can only be in a child’s interest, is not possible without mutual trust between parent and teacher.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)