On Thursday, a gay couple filed a class action lawsuit against New York City because the city’s health insurance plan does not cover in vitro fertilization (IVF) for male couples.
According to NBC News, the lawsuit comes as part of a “yearslong effort” by the gay couple to get the Big Apple to amend its health benefits. In the lawsuit, the couple alleges that the current policies in place are discriminatory.
The gay couple spearheading the lawsuit reportedly plans to utilize IVF and surrogacy to have kids (via NBC News):
Corey Briskin and Nicholas Maggipinto said they have been talking about having children since 2014, ahead of their engagement. They planned to use a two-part process: First, they would use IVF, where an egg is combined with a sperm in a lab, and second, they would work with an agency to hire a surrogate who would have the fertilized egg implanted and would carry the baby to term. They planned to have the IVF covered by insurance and planned to pay for the surrogacy out of pocket.
Briskin took a job as an assistant district attorney at the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan in 2017, and he learned soon after that the city’s health plan doesn’t cover IVF benefits for gay men. Briskin left that job in March 2022, but he is still covered under the city’s plan through a federal law called COBRA, which allows employees to continue to receive health care coverage from their former employer for up to three years if they pay the full premium.
In April 2022, the couple reportedly filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in an effort to change the city’s health care policy. This did not work out because the city stated that it does not provide IVF benefits to surrogates.
Reportedly, the city denies IVF benefits to gay men because it requires employees under the health care plan to meet its definition of infertility to qualify. The city’s definition of infertility is the inability to conceive a child through male-female unprotected intercourse in a consecutive 12-month period or through intrauterine insemination, or IUI. Lesbian couples and single women who undergo IUI and do not become pregnant can qualify as infertile.
The gay couple’s lawsuit reportedly argues that the city’s exclusion of gay men from being eligible for IVF benefits violates Title VII, the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment and New York state and New York City human rights laws.
“But gay men, although equally incapable of conceiving a child without IVF, are always denied access to IVF under the City’s healthcare plan,” the complaint states. “By defining ‘infertility’ in this exclusionary manner, single female employees, female employees with male partners, female employees with female partners, and male employees with female partners are always potentially eligible for some IVF benefits under the City’s healthcare plan, but gay male employees—whether individually or with male partners—are never eligible for any IVF benefits.”
Apparently, the gay couple has already received “donated” embryos they are waiting to transfer into a surrogate’s body. The couple expects to pay $100,000 in IVF costs and an additional $165,000 on surrogacy.