Seattle's gay marriage policy challenged

(Editor's note: This story has been changed since it was first published. The date that King County Superior Court ruled against the Pacific Justice Institute's lawsuit was misstated originally.)

A California organization has asked a court to throw out Seattle's policy of recognizing gay marriages of its workers.

The Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative, non-profit legal defense group specializing in religious freedom and parental rights, said Mayor Greg Nickels went beyond his authority in 2004 when he ordered city departments to provide equal benefits to employees married by governments that license same-sex marriages.

At issue is whether Nickels used language in his order and accompanying press release to effectively sanction gay marriage -- a move the group said is at odds with the state's ban on gay marriages.

"It's our position that this goes way beyond employee benefits," Matthew McReynolds, an attorney for Pacific Justice Institute, told a three-judge state Court of Appeals panel Tuesday. "He was just using this as an opportunity to undercut the (state) Defense of Marriage Act."

Representing the city, attorney Phil Brenneman countered that Nickels' policy was limited to employee benefits. Beyond that, the mayor's language only reflected his personal stance in favor of gay marriage, he said. "It's clear that this is the mayor's political position," Brenneman said.

One of the three judges on the appellate bench took issue with the discrepancy between the limited scope of Nickels' executive order and his broader public endorsement of gay marriage. "The mayor was misleading the public in terms of what he was trying to accomplish," Judge Stephen Dwyer said.

In practical terms, both the lawsuit and the city rules it challenges are largely symbolic. Nickels' order requires city departments to recognize same-sex marriages licensed in other states.

But that order was largely symbolic because the city already had provided benefits to domestic partners since 1989. However, the order does allow married same-sex workers to sign up for such coverage with less paperwork -- signing on as "married" rather than filling out separate "domestic partnership forms."

A King County Superior Court ruled against the institute's lawsuit in 2004.