An Illinois-based Catholic hospital system that employs more than 24,000 people will only cover fertility treatment for workers in opposite-sex marriages, a policy some lawyers say could run afoul of federal discrimination laws.
Many health plans that cover fertility treatment services use the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention definition of infertility, which refers to a person being unable to get pregnant after at least a year of unprotected sex.
Under the policy it transferred this year to a new third-party administrator, OSF HealthCare, which operates 15 hospitals and 132 other facilities in Illinois and Michigan, narrows that definition to “the inability for a married couple of opposite sex spouses to conceive” and said its coverage aimed to assist “married opposite sex spouses” in their bid to have a child, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg Law.
By limiting benefits to opposite-sex spouses, the OSF policy reflects one of the first instances of an employer explicitly excluding workers from coverage not because of objections to the treatment they are seeking but because of their sexual orientation, nearly a dozen lawyers and advocates told Bloomberg Law.
Peter Romer-Friedman, an attorney at Gupta Wessler PLLC who is representing a same-sex couple that filed a complaint against New York City for fertility treatment...
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