February 21, 2007

A City of Portland Commissioner and his former partner have filed a civil rights lawsuit alleging PERS - the Public Employee Retirement System - is discriminating against them because it will not recognize their breakup in the same-way it recognizes opposite-sex couple divorces.

Commissioner Sam Adams and Greg Eddie were together for 11 years. 

They owned a home, shared a joint bank account, and pooled their assets. 

In 2004 the men ended their relationship and agreed to split their shared assets 50-50.

But when Adams attempted to have his retirement account with PERS equally divided the System refused saying the breakup was not a divorce in the legal sense.

Adam and Eddie maintain in their lawsuit that since same-sex couples cannot marry the System is violating a 1998 ruling by the Oregon Court of Appeals that said it was illegal to deny state benefits and services based on sexual orientation. 

The ruling said that the protections of Oregon's constitution extend to gay and lesbian families and that the state could not disfavor them based on their inability to marry. 

Under the statutes that govern Oregon's Public Employee Retirement System, when a married PERS employee divorces, a court has the clear right to order PERS to divide the retirement account between the divorcing parties. Such divisions are in fact common between divorcing couples.

"Divorce is an unfortunate but crucial legal protection for many Americans," Eddie told a Portland news conference. 

"Whether straight and married, or same-sex partners, the process of dissolving a long-term relationship is always difficult. And we believe that the state has an interest in assisting all divorcing couples to do so as equally and fairly as possible. At the end of our 11-year partnership, we went through the arduous process of dividing all of our joint assets 50/50. But with Sam's retirement - we hit a brick wall."

Adams said the he and Eddie had hoped to arrive at an equitable settlement with PERS but that was not possible.

"Bringing a lawsuit is never a first choice," he said. "But we both feel strongly that basic fairness is a cause worth fighting for – not just for ourselves but for all gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Oregonians who face discrimination each and every day."

The men are represented by Basic Rights Oregon.

"We at Basic Rights Oregon sincerely hope that this will be the year our elected leaders choose to do the right thing – by passing Civil Unions and Anti-Discrimination legislation to promote basic fairness in Oregon. But we will not simply wait, and hope for our basic rights to be realized," said Jim Morris, Basic Rights Oregon Board Co-Chair.

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