Several Other Proposals Dropped

One proposal of recent years in the administration’s budgets, to open FEHB eligibility to same-sex domestic partners, was not included in the latest version. That proposal never had drawn attention on Capitol Hill apart from a brief overview several years ago, and the administration never had pushed hard for it. The proposal apparently was dropped because the original justification for it–that opposite-sex couples always had the option of marrying to gain eligibility for the second person but that same-sex couples did not–has been undercut by two Supreme Court decisions. The first recognized same-sex marriages for federal benefits purposes and the second required all states to recognize them. Dropping the FEHB proposal represents the latest, but possibly not the last, step in walking back the expansion of several federal employee benefit programs to include same-sex domestic partners that predated those decisions. Last year OPM ended a policy that had allowed coverage of children of those partners under certain circumstances–although not the partners themselves–under FEHB and it canceled plans to extend a similar right to coverage under the FEGLI life insurance family coverage option.