A former lawyer for New York City and his husband have filed a complaint against the city saying they were denied insurance coverage because of a definition of infertility that excludes gay men.
A same-sex married couple said in a complaint filed Tuesday that the City of New York discriminated against them in denying them in vitro fertilization coverage under the city’s insurance plan for employees.
The couple, Nicholas Maggipinto, 36, and Corey Briskin, 33, claim the policy discriminates against them based on their sex and sexual orientation and that if they were female or in a heterosexual relationship they would have access to the I.V.F. benefits that city employees are entitled to. Mr. Briskin was, until recently, an assistant district attorney.
Under the city’s insurance benefits policy, a covered person is only eligible for such services when they are deemed infertile. The policy defines infertility as the inability to conceive after “12 months of unprotected intercourse,” or intrauterine insemination — a procedure that inserts sperm directly inside a uterus — for a period of time.
Intercourse is not defined in the policy, but the complaint claims New York City and its insurers “have interpreted it to mean intercourse between a man and a female.”
That language, the complaint said, made it impossible for Mr. Briskin and Mr. Maggipinto, who will need to use a surrogate, to ever be deemed infertile, effectively blocking them from receiving any I.V.F. insurance coverage....
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