Walmart faces a legal controversy after Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has denied health insurance benefits to the spouse of its gay employee. This triggered the employee to file a lawsuit against the world's largest retailer on grounds of discrimination.
NYC Today reported that the suit was filed on Tuesday by Jackie Cote, an office manager who has worked at Walmart stores in Maine and Massachusetts for more than 15 years. The case was filed at the US District Court in Boston. The case is Cote v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc and seeks nationwide class-action status.
Cote said in the lawsuit that her wife, Diana Smithson, who was also a Walmart employee until 2008, developed cancer in 2012. Walmart however denied her health insurance benefits.
Just the past year, Walmart started providing benefits to gay employees' spouses, but at the time of Smithson's cancer, her health benefits were denied. Cote said that she and her wife made numerous attempts to apply for the company's health insurance plans from 2008 through 2012, but the online system prevented their registration because they were both females, according to iFreePress.
Cote filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year, which is a prerequisite to filing an employment discrimination lawsuit. The Commission said in January that Wal-Mart violated gender discrimination laws by denying benefits to Smithson. The commission has been championing the crusade that employment discrimination against gay people is gender discrimination.
Wal-Mart argued before the commission that because federal anti-discrimination laws did not apply to gay employees, it was not obligated to provide benefits to their spouses, reported the Financial Express.
The retailer's assertion is that federal laws governing the administration of employee benefits preempted any discrimination claims. The federal anti-discrimination laws did not apply to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees, so it was not liable to offer benefits to their spouses.
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