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Written by Louis Weisberg, Staff writer
Aug 25, 2010
Katie Belanger – Photo: Courtesy
A Christian-right group is suing to overturn Wisconsin’s domestic partner registry on the grounds that it violates the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and any arrangement “substantially similar” to marriage.
Wisconsin Family Action filed suit in Dane County Circuit Court on Aug. 20, contending that the registry creates a legal status that is substantially similar to that of marriage. The WFA was also behind the 2006 voter referendum that resulted in the constitutional ban.
Gov. Jim Doyle proposed the registry as a means of granting same-sex couples basic legal rights, including the right to visit each other in hospitals, make end-of-life decisions and inherit each other’s property. The Democratic-controlled Legislature approved the registry and it went into effect in August 2009.
As of the beginning of August, 1,541 couples had signed up.
“A reasonable person observing this registry would easily conclude that it is intended to mirror marriage,” Julaine Appling, president of Wisconsin Family Action, said in a statement. “It borrows the requirements and eligibility standards for marriage, even to the point of requiring that the price of the registry certificate be the same as for a marriage license.”
But Katie Belanger, executive director of Fair Wisconsin, countered that the registry’s 43 benefits do not compare in scope with the 200 rights that come with marriage under state law. “These are the most basic, critical things that couples need to have to take care of one another,” she said.
The current lawsuit is the second filed by WFA against the registry. In July 2009, the group tried but ultimately failed to take its case directly to the Supreme Court, forcing WFA to re-file at the circuit court level.
Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen refused to defend the registry last year, forcing the state to hire an independent counsel to represent the state. A spokesman for Van Hollen said the attorney general would not represent the registry in this case either.
Van Hollen is up for re-election in November, when he faces Democrat Scott Hassett at the polls.
Madison attorney Lester Pines, who represented the registry last year, will probably do so again, according to sources close to the case. The ACLU of Wisconsin, which supported the defense in 2009 is also “ready to proceed to join the case,” said executive director Christopher Ahmuty.
WFA is represented by the Alliance Defense Fund. The plaintiffs include WFA board members Jo Egelhoff, Jerry Hiller, Richard Kessenich and E. Lee Webster. They claim the registry harms them because it costs taxpayer money to administer.
“They can’t produce anybody whose marriage has been harmed (by the registry),” Ahmuty said. “You’ve got to come to the conclusion that they’re doing this because they just don’t want domestic relationships recognized in any form. This case is a pretty clear example that they’re not so much animated by the desire to protect marriage as animus, dislike or bias toward LGBT people, because (the registry is) so far from marriage.”
“While the Wisconsin Family Action and the Alliance Defense Fund will attempt to compare the domestic partnership registry to the legal definition of marriage,” Ahmuty continued, “same-sex couples will seek to demonstrate a factual record of how the protections offered by the registry are quite limited and in no way violate the marriage ban. … That’s just ludicrous.”
In a separate case, the state Supreme Court issued a ruling in June that upheld the state’s constitutional ban on gay marriage and civil unions. But that ruling did not affect the registry.
- AP contributed to this story
