Sparked by a rapidly changing social and legal landscape, a Kansas University Senate task force soon will look into the possibility of offering benefits to same-sex and domestic partners of KU employees.

At issue is a concern for equal rights among employees as well as a desire to make the university more competitive in hiring and retaining faculty and staff.

The group, established in October by the Senate, represents a second effort to extend benefits such as health insurance to domestic partners of employees. A previous similar task force failed to get action from university administration on most of the issues it raised.

That task force, formed in 2009, asked KU administration to extend full benefits to all domestic partners of employees. Not to do so was a violation of the university’s own anti-discrimination policies, the group concluded. The group’s members wrote that “married employees receive a wide range of benefits that are not available to employees with domestic partners,” which creates a “meaningful financial loss to same-sex or unmarried different-sex couples” — a situation that “discriminates against KU faculty and employees with domestic partners.”

Options unclear

Since then, the Kansas Board of Regents made sick and bereavement leave available for those in a committed relationship. However, some of the primary compensatory benefits of working at the university remain unavailable to same-sex and unmarried heterosexual partners.

Tim Caboni, KU’s vice chancellor for public affairs, said in an email that the university will “continue to engage” the Regents on the issue of benefits, but “any changes that might be considered by the regents must comply with the restrictions in place under the Kansas Constitution and state law.”

Those who pushed for the current task force hope to see all benefits currently extended to heterosexual spouses of employees extended to all partners of employees, as the previous task force recommended, said Mike Krings, a public affairs officer for KU and president of the Unclassified Senate.

On Wednesday the KU Student Senate backed the call for equal treatment. It unanimously passed a resolution affirming equal rights for all employees and stating its support of extending benefits to same-sex partners.

The university is already behind some of its peers on this front. Of the 10 universities listed as peer institutions in KU’s strategic plan, five — Indiana University, Michigan State University, University of Colorado, University of Florida and University of Iowa — offer health insurance to partners of employees, according to data from the Human Rights Campaign, an lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group.

But the university’s options still aren’t fully clear. Health insurance through the university is managed by the state-run Kansas Health Care Commission. The commission extends insurance only to the “lawful husband or wife” of an employee, not partners. Beyond that hurdle, a Kansas state statute voids any marriage aside from those between opposite-sex partners and a state constitutional amendment restricts the “the rights or incidents of marriage” to heterosexual marriages.

Bill Rich, a professor of law at Washburn University, said that while the boundaries of the amendment haven’t been tested by a government agency yet, he doesn’t think the language of it would prevent KU from offering benefits to employees’ partners. If benefits such as health insurance are not exclusive to spouses and can be offered to children and other relations, Rich reasons, they wouldn’t seem to be a right specific to marriage.

“Surely the people of Kansas who adopted that amendment didn’t mean to preclude giving benefits to children,” Rich said.

Multiple state-level legal barriers to offering health insurance and other benefits to partners remain. The previous task force offered a workaround that Krings said could be taken up by the new task force. In lieu of offering insurance directly, the previous task force recommended the university offer a pay differential so employees could purchase private health insurance. With federal health exchanges now more or less online, that might be a more feasible option than before.

Falling behind

In the meantime, the absence of partner benefits could be hurting KU’s ability to recruit and retain faculty and staff. The report produced by the 2009 committee included testimonials from KU faculty and staff about hiring obstacles and attrition that resulted from the lack of university benefits for same-sex partners. Mary Ellen Kondrat, dean of the School of Social Welfare, said at the time that the school had lost a “highly productive young scholar” to Rutgers because she could not get benefits for her partner through KU.

An employee in student housing, whose name was withheld from the committee’s report, said she “kept an eye on vacancies in my field at other institutions” because of the lack of benefits for her partner at KU. The report detailed several other stories of those who personally ran up against issues because of the university policy on same-sex partners, as well as department heads who struggled to hire and keep employees.

On that subject, Caboni said KU competes with universities that “offer benefits packages that put us at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace and any changes that would enhance our competitive position would be welcome.”

David Day, communications manager for KU Information Technology, has heard testimonials as a staff senator from those affected by KU’s lack of benefits. He also has friends at the university who have struggled with the issue. “To hear people who are in 20- and 30-year relationships who are denied the basic benefits of employment is just very difficult,” he said.

While recruiting issues continue at the university, Krings said other forces motivating the creation of the task force are broader national trends related to same-sex marriages, among them the Supreme Court’s recent decision on the Defense of Marriage Act and the growing number of states legalizing same-sex marriages.

For those who have watched previous efforts within the university come up short, there is a sense that the university could soon lag behind a nation that is quickly coming to support same-sex marriage and gay rights. “We need to offer an environment that supports individuals and provides an equitable environment for all individuals,” Day said.

“The University of Kansas should be a leader, and yet it’s risking falling behind and playing catch up on this issue,” he said.