Health Benefits for Same-sex Partners: Practical Considerations and Philosophical Underpinnings of University Policy Development.

Abstract

This dissertation examines university employees’ access to public health benefits in the state of Michigan, following the 2004 passage of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Proposition 04-02 was interpreted by Michigan courts to mean that under traditional eligibility schemes, public employers could no longer offer health benefits to the same-sex domestic partners (or the children of same-sex domestic partners) of employees. How Michigan’s research universities responded to this change in public policy illustrates the complex array of moral and strategic concerns undergirding the issue of health benefits for gay and lesbian faculty and staff. This multiple case study is derived from an institutional logics methodology. Drawing from a multitude of sources, including interviews, secondary data collection and document analysis, it reveals four contested logics at work behind institutional decision-making. Presented in order of magnitude, these are: market logics, compliance logics, political logics and diversity logics. The recognition that LGBT faculty and staff are essential to institutional competitiveness and recruitment initiatives emerges as an important consideration. Against the backdrop of retrenchment and fiscal austerity particular to public higher education, cost containment plays a variable role, first as a material and later as a cultural consideration. These findings, and others, provide insight into the implications of the broader fight over the institution of marriage and the movement for gay civil rights for public higher education. Elaborating upon this empirical platform, the study develops a new rubric for evaluating the fairness of work-family policy in higher education. Harnessing the Human Capabilities approach from political philosophy it evaluates the organizational adaptations of Michigan’s higher educational institutions to the new regulatory environment. This research offers several contributions to the field: a substantive analysis of access to health benefits for same-sex partners and family members, and its importance to recruitment and retention in higher education; the identification of an evolving definition of diversity in which sexual orientation plays an increasingly important role; a deeper understanding of the tension between material and cultural considerations in institutional decision-making; and a powerful new theoretical construct for the normative evaluation of public policy and organizational change in higher education.