A judge in Minnesota ruled that a man’s employer sponsored health insurance plan must cover his spouse. She was born male, and underwent a sex-change operation before the couple got married. The state of Minnesota legally considers her to be female, and therefore, so should the man’s employer. The employer wanted to deny coverage because it considered the couple to be in a same-sex marriage.
Calvin Radtke works for United Parcel Service (UPS), in Minnesota. This company, like many others, offers an employer sponsored health insurance plan. It will cover an employee and his or her spouse. He enrolled his wife, Christine Alisen Radtke, in his health plan. This is the sort of thing that married people do all the time as soon as they become eligible for health insurance through their work.
UPS denied coverage for Christine. The reason was that UPS believed that Calvin and Christine were in a same-sex marriage. Minnesota does not recognize same-sex marriages, so UPS felt that it didn’t have to cover Calvin’s spouse in the health plan. The company pointed at the Defense of Marriage Act in order to back up its decision.
Why on earth would UPS think that Calvin and Christine were in a same-sex marriage? It is because Christine is transgendered. She was born in Wisconsin, and her original birth certificate listed her sex as male and her name as Richard William Barker. In 1986 she underwent a sex-change operation. In 2003, she got a court order that directed Wisconsin to change her birth certificate to reflect her new name and her sex change. One month after that, Calvin and Christine got married.
After a person has a sex change, it becomes necessary for the person to have their birth certificate changed. This is because a birth certificate is a legal document that is used to identify a person so that the person can get other legal documents such as a marriage license, a driver’s license, or a passport. When Calvin and Christine got married, the state of Minnesota legally considered Christine to be female. Otherwise, their marriage would not have been recognized.
Christine sued the health plan from UPS. She said it improperly denied her medical benefits in 2010 on the grounds that she was not legally married to employee Calvin Radtke. Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Davis ruled that the health plan erred when it denied coverage to Christine on the theory that she and Calvin were in a same-sex marriage. The judge said: “This question is purely one of Minnesota law”. Minnesota law recognizes a married person’s sex when the marriage takes place.
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