FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 11, 2003

District Provides Health Insurance to Gay and Lesbian Employees

School District Provides Health Insurance to Gay and Lesbian Employees for their Families

(Manchester, CT) With discrimination complaints filed by Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (“GLAD”) pending against the Manchester Board of Education (“Board”), the Board has approved new contracts for school administrators and teachers that include health insurance for the partners of its gay and lesbian employees. The Manchester Board of Directors approved the Administrators’ contract on November 18th, and the Teachers’ contract was agreed upon in arbitration and formally certified by the arbitrator on November 17th.

Although the Administrators and Teachers Unions had worked to include health insurance for employees’ domestic partners in years past, the issue was always taken off the table by the Board of Education. GLAD filed complaints against the Board with the Connecticut Commission for Human Rights and Opportunities (“CHRO”) in June 2003 on behalf of teachers and school administrators who were previously denied health insurance for their same-sex partners. On November 6th, the CHRO denied the Board’s motion to dismiss the complaints, finding that they passed the CHRO’s merit assessment review.

“The Board of Education now clearly understands that this is a matter of equal pay for equal work,” GLAD attorney Karen Loewy said. “The Board has ended its policy of withholding employment benefits because an employee is gay and unmarried, which defies the anti-discrimination guarantees of this state.”

Bill Brindamour, an elementary school principal who has been with his partner, Peter Tognalli, for twenty-five years, filed one of the complaints. “We have worked hard to build a life together, and as we get older and plan for our retirement, my inability to obtain health insurance for Peter seriously impacted our financial and emotional well being. We are extremely relieved that this will no longer be the case.”

“I am incredibly gratified that I will finally have access to the same protections my non-gay and married colleagues have for their families,” added Rick Rossi, a middle school science teacher, whose requests for health insurance for his partner of twenty-three years, Tom Hurlbut, had been repeatedly denied. “It is a shame that it took our filing suit to get the Board to do the right thing.”

GLAD filed the complaints, along with cooperating counsel Ruth Pulda, of the Hartford firm of Livingston, Adler, Pulda, Meiklejohn and Kelly, P.C.