N.J. civil unions and insurance - The cost, not the semantics, is the focus to businesses, which would be required to pay health benefits for workers' same-sex partners

In the political arena, reaction to New Jersey's "civil union" legislation passed Thursday centers on whether it should count as "marriage."

But in the workplace, it's all about health insurance.

If Gov. Corzine signs the bill as expected, private employers will have to offer the same insurance benefit to their employees' same-sex civil-union partners as they do to heterosexual spouses. "The major bump from a dollar-sign standpoint is going to be benefits," said Louis J. Lessig, board member of the South Jersey-based Tri-State Human Resource Management Association.

"Most people ideologically agree with it," said Lessig, an employment attorney with Brown & Connery in Westmont. "But it is still something else that they have to pay" at a time when health-care costs are rising and employers are cutting benefits and shifting more costs to employees.

New Jersey has long been a leader in protecting the workplace rights of its gay citizens.

In 1993, New Jersey enacted legislation saying workers could not be discriminated against because of their sexual preference, just as they can't face discrimination based on age, gender or race. In 2004, a domestic-partnership law recognized some aspects of same-sex unions and required insurers to develop insurance policies that covered same-sex partners.

But the law stopped short of requiring employers to give health insurance to the same-sex partners of employees.

Now it will be up to human-resource managers to deal with all the paperwork and administrative challenges that come with including a new group of people in a benefits program.

Bette Francis, executive director of the Garden State Council, a branch of the Society for Human Resource Management, said companies had been working on this issue for a while.

Francis, for example, is vice president of a 300-employee technology company based in North Jersey. Her company offers a traditional family plan to its employees, but does not offer it to gay partners.

"We're trying to understand what will be the best approach," she said. "We want to have an understanding of what our employees need without violating their privacy."

The law will also entitle civil-union spouses to family-leave benefits and to survivor benefits under New Jersey's Workers' Compensation Act.

On Thursday, the same day legislators were debating the bill in Trenton, human-resource managers who belong to MidAtlantic Employers' Association were talking about it at lunch at the association's Mount Laurel center. "Most of them were not concerned about it," said James Devine, president of the association. "They had already developed policies about it."

The law requires couples to obtain a civil-union license, just as a heterosexual couple would obtain a marriage license. The license is proof for an employer.

Differences in state and federal laws could make implementation complicated, said Ian Meklinsky, a Fox Rothschild partner based in the law firm's Princeton office. Because civil unions are not recognized in federal law, for example, the health insurance benefit to the gay partner would be counted as income and would be taxable, he said.

Whether the law will allow civil-union spouses to inherit pension benefits is unclear. The New Jersey bill says partners in civil unions have the same rights as heterosexual married couples, including the use of a pension by a surviving spouse.

But a Fox Rothschild bulletin on the topic opines that pensions are covered under federal laws, which define marriage strictly as a relationship between a man and a woman.