Nearly 15 years ago, a Supreme Court decision made same-sex marriage legal in the United States, and in 2020 the court affirmed that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act applies to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Yet when it comes to building a family, LGBTQ couples can struggle to obtain insurance coverage for the costly procedures required, from egg donation to in vitro fertilization, surrogacy and adoption. Only seven states, including New York, require insurance companies to provide such coverage irrespective of a couple’s sex or sexual orientation. In New York City, however, local government employees are among those battling for equal access to fertility benefits.
Still, many private employers in the region, and large companies in particular, have stepped up to the plate, providing the same family-building benefits to gay couples that they offer to heterosexual employees. Indeed, companies see such benefits and programs not only as key to attracting and retaining employees but as essential to their productivity and job satisfaction — and ultimately, their contribution to the success of the company itself.
According to the state Department of Health, more than 1 million New Yorkers identify as members of the LGBTQ community.
In 2020 national health policy organization KFF, which is headquartered in San Francisco, found that 74% of U.S. companies that offer health insurance coverage to opposite-sex spouses also provided coverage to same-sex spouses, up from 43% in 2016.
In addition, firms are taking steps to ensure employees who identify as transgender can receive appropriate and affirming care. The Human Rights Campaign’s 2023 Corporate Equality Index found that 73% of Fortune 500 companies and 94% of all the companies it rated last year provide transgender-inclusive health insurance coverage, compared with none in 2002.
“A lot of exclusionary policies did not consider LGBTQ people part of the American family 20 to 30 years ago,” said civil rights attorney Peter Friedman-Romer. “Now, across the country, people are protected by antidiscrimination laws and are part of the American family and workforce. We are seeing employers’ policies catch up to the modern understanding of inclusion.”
Family planning and transgender care
A recent survey of 1,000 LGBTQ individuals by fertility benefits company Progyny, which is based in Manhattan, found that even when their workplace offered fertility coverage, 68% said they were unable to access it because it required precertification or a medical diagnosis of infertility.
Progyny, which works with employers to provide fertility and family-building benefits, largely in the metro area, has been growing, which it attributes to employers’ desire to provide coverage such as IVF and surrogacy benefits to all employees even if their existing insurance plan does not. Founded in 2015 with just two clients, Progyny went public in 2019 and today has 460 self-insured employer clients.
“Every one of our client employers has a fully inclusive benefit that covers the LGBTQ population,” said CEO Peter Anevski. “When they realize that under their original [insurance] plan it’s restricted, they are happy to adopt a benefit that includes everyone.”
One of those clients is Ferring Pharmaceuticals, a Switzerland-based drug company specializing in reproductive medicine, gastroenterology and urology. In the U.S., Ferring has 1,000 employees, half of them in Parsippany, New Jersey. In 2022 the company launched its Building Families program, a benefits package that removes financial barriers to surrogacy, adoption and IVF and offers 26 weeks of paid parental leave. Another program, Fertility Out Loud, provides resources for workers trying to build a family, including specific resources for LBGTQ employees.
As a company, one of Ferring’s goals is to reach a diverse set of patients, said Purvi Tailor, vice president of human resources. And the company also wants to attract diverse talent. “The whole notion of inclusion is part of the business we’re in, and it’s very important to demonstrate that as an employer.”
Prudential Insurance, meanwhile, has long been a supporter of the LGBTQ community, joining in briefs to the Supreme Court in the Obergefell case, which codified same-sex marriage, and more recently in the Bostock case, which dealt with Title VII. Prudential, which has 9,000 employees in the metro region, provides fertility benefits to all regardless of sexual orientation.
“We know the LBGTQ+ population represents an increasingly larger percentage of the world, and it’s important for us to be inclusive of that group within our workplace,” said Kate Tekker, Prudential’s head of global rewards and HR operations.
Benefits and culture are bottom-line issues for employers. At professional services firm Accenture, which employs 742,000 workers worldwide and operates an innovation hub on Manhattan’s West Side, equal access to insurance coverage and family-building benefits for same-sex partners and/or recognized domestic partners is a given. Those same benefits are available to trans employees along with mental health benefits and medically necessary surgical procedures related to gender reassignment.
“We foster a culture and a workplace in which all our people feel a sense of belonging, are respected and are empowered to do their best work,” said Beck Bailey, Accenture’s global chief diversity officer. “These efforts are one of the many factors that help us attract the most innovative and talented people in our industry.”
More to do
One employer being asked to do more, however, is New York City, which was sued in May for denying fertility benefits to Corey Briskin, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Briskin and his husband wanted to conceive a child with the help of an egg donor, IVF and a surrogate. Represented by Romer-Friedman, the civil rights attorney, the couple filed a class-action suit on May 9 noting that the city provides such benefits to female employees and male workers with female partners. However, the city’s definition of infertility — the inability to conceive through intercourse or intrauterine insemination for 12 consecutive months — inevitably excludes male couples. The city, which has 60 days to respond to the complaint, had not responded as of early last week.
In response to the lawsuit, City Council member Lynn Shulman, who is chair of the council’s health committee, has introduced a bill that would extend coverage for fertility benefits to city employees who can’t meet the local government’s current definition of infertility.
Still, the landscape is clearly improving for LGBTQ employees as more and more employers expand fertility coverage to include them, as well as add benefits for trans employees, and there is every reason to expect the trend will continue.
The Human Rights Campaign’s annual survey of corporate equal rights, which measures, among other things, the level of benefits and inclusivity for LGBTQ employees, in 2023 gave a perfect score to 545 companies headquartered in the 50 states — compared with just 15 companies in 2002.
Judy Messina , 2024-06-20 11:48:06
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