What does the Mayor’s Executive Order do?

The Mayor’s Executive Order directs all City Departments to recognize the validity of same sex marriages, in the same way that they recognize heterosexual marriages.

What is the significance of the Mayor’s Executive Order?

Seattle is taking a leading role in recognizing same sex marriages in this City. Currently, gays and lesbians who are in committed relationships must fill out a domestic partnership agreement in order to receive City employment benefits. With this Executive Order, a City employee would be able to obtain employee benefits for his or her spouse if he or she has been married, regardless of his or her sexual orientation.

What benefits will a gay or lesbian City employee who has been married receive as a result of this Executive Order?

If the City employee has been married, he or she will receive all of the benefits that a heterosexual married couple receives, including health benefits, family and medical leave benefits, disability, and retirement.

Where does the Mayor obtain his authority to issue this Executive Order?

Under Article V of the City’s Charter, the Mayor has authority to direct and control all subordinate officers of the City. Therefore, he has the authority to direct his departments to recognize such marriage licenses.

Isn’t the Mayor’s action in violation of State law?

Washington State’s Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) prohibits same sex marriages. But the Mayor, on the advice of the City Attorney, believes that the state DOMA possibly violates the Washington State and Federal Constitutions. Marriage is a fundamental constitutional right which the equal protection clause guarantees to all citizens, without regard to sexual orientation.

Moreover, the City believes that neither the Executive Order nor the proposed ordinance is preempted by Washington State’s DOMA. Both the Executive Order and the proposed ordinance ensure that City ordinances will grant equal benefits and protections to gay married couples. The City does not have the power to issue marriage licenses or recognize marriages.

What is the significance of the proposed ordinance?

The proposed ordinance provides members of same sex marriages the same rights and protections guaranteed to individuals in heterosexual marriages in the City of Seattle.

But aren’t most rights given to members of a marital community provided under state and federal law?

Many rights are provided to a marital community under state and federal law. Nevertheless the City can and will grant what rights are within its power to married homosexual couples as it does to heterosexual couples. Some of the rights and protections that the ordinance will provide to married gay City of Seattle residents are listed below. Married homosexual City employees will be entitled to family and medical leave benefits, funeral leave, and their spouses will be beneficiaries of their retirement savings. Even though the City has long allowed gays to register their partners as domestic partners, not all chose to do so, and now married gays will not need register as domestic partners to get the same rights and benefits as married heterosexuals.

With passage of the ordinance, the City’s anti-discrimination ordinances will apply to homosexual married couples. Employers within the City of Seattle will not be able to discriminate against married homosexuals as to any aspect of employment, from hiring to firing, including the provision of benefits.

Landlords and real estate agents within the City will be required to treat married homosexuals equally with married heterosexuals in all real estate transactions. For example, many leases give special rights to surviving spouses of a lessee. Those rights will now be available to homosexual spouses.

Many married couples run businesses together in Seattle. If the spouse who holds the business license passes away, this ordinance will automatically grant that license to the surviving gay spouse.

Not all the inequities suffered by homosexuals can be corrected by this ordinance. But the Mayor hopes that the ordinance will encourage businesses, hospitals, employers and others in Seattle to grant equal rights to homosexual married couples wherever possible—even where not mandated to do so. Their power to correct these inequities is considerable. Gay spouses do not currently have the right to attend to and room with their spouses who are in nursing homes. Gay spouses do not have equal rights with heterosexual spouses to make decisions for incapacitated spouses or for spouses who have died.