Legally Married, but Their Boss Disagrees

[Jazzy]

Call it a little ditty about Jackie and Diana: Jacqueline Cote and Diana Smithson met on Cape Cod in 1992, fell in love, and moved to Maine together in 1998. They both got jobs at Walmart, working side by side in the bakery department. In 2003, they decided to make it official. They moved to Massachusetts and, five days after the state made it legal, they got married. They both continued to work in various positions at Walmart stores.

In 2006, Cote was promoted to a management job, where she made significantly more money and generally enjoyed the work. The following year, Smithson quit her own job in order to care for Cote’s elderly mother, who had dementia.

Cote tried to add Smithson to her health-insurance plan as a spouse. When she logged into Walmart’s employee-benefits site, she said it required her to select her spouse’s gender.

“I would click 'female,' and it would tell me I could not proceed and I needed to call the home office [in Arkansas],” Cote told me.

When she called, the company said “that wasn't something that they were prepared to offer at this time,” Cote said.

“You're married to a woman?"
Every year, Cote churned through the same process at open-enrollment time, and every year, she was denied. In 2012, Smithson was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and she lost the private insurance she had been paying for separately.

In 2014, Walmart changed its policy to allow same-sex spouses to join its employees’ health insurance plans. But it was too late for Smithson: She had already racked up more than $100,000 in medical expenses, Cote and her lawyers say.

To Cote and her lawyers, the dispute is about more than finances. Cote said she felt like a second-class citizen. Over the years, she would sometimes test Walmart’s website by clicking “male,” rather than “female,” on her spousal benefits application. The form would sail through the system, she said.

She says she now wants an apology on top of restitution for the medical bills.

Source

Do you believe Walmart discriminated against Cote and Smithson because of their sex? Why/Why not?

 

[Webster]

Do you believe Walmart discriminated against Cote and Smithson because of their sex? Why/Why not?

Yes, no question they were discriminated against. They were legally married in a state which allowed SSM, therefore one would think that, DOMA notwithstanding, the Constitution's Full Faith & Credit Clause should apply here....now, will they win in court? Good question....and playing devil's advocate here, Wal-Mart has a decent defense they can use in turn: they can argue that since they're based in Arkansas, which at the time didn't recognize SSM's, they were not under any legal obligation to recognize their marriage under the law at the time.

FWIW, I think this is one of those cases that'll be settled out-of-court; even for a company of Wal-Mart's size, bad publicity is still bad publicity.
[/quote]

 

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

They said it was something they do not provide. She knew this and could have found another job that did provide it. The courts should not even hear this case. But it would be a good thing for Walmart to fix this issue.

 

[Jazzy]

The thing that stood out to me in this article is the part where it states Diana Smithson had private insurance but she lost the private insurance she had been paying for separately when she decided to leave Walmart. Now that she's in debt, they expect Walmart to pay? This is her fault she's in this mess. You don't drop your current insurance until your new coverage is up and running.

 

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

The thing that stood out to me in this article is the part where it states Diana Smithson had private insurance but she lost the private insurance she had been paying for separately when she decided to leave Walmart. Now that she's in debt, they expect Walmart to pay? This is her fault she's in this mess. You don't drop your current insurance until your new coverage is up and running.

I completely missed that connection!