Statement of Jennifer C. Pizer Upon Filing Young v. Lingle

I am Jenny Pizer, Lambda Legal Senior Counsel, and I am here with my Lambda Legal colleagues Staff Attorney Tara Borelli and Regional Director Loren Javier. We are proud to be joined by our co-counsel in this litigation, Dan Gluck and Laurie Temple of the ACLU of Hawai`i and Clyde Wadsworth of the Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing law firm.

Together, we have the privilege of representing six devoted, amazing couples – some of whom have been together for two or three decades. They are inspiring examples for us all that love can be steadfast and can endure – even in these sometimes cynical modern times – including for gay people.

Two of these couples are raising beautiful young children. One has a grown son. One looks forward to providing a loving home to children some day soon.

These are families that span generations – with love and support from their parents and siblings. They are bound together by love – living their lives day-to-day as others do – but denied the basic, comprehensive legal tools they need to take care of each other – to take responsibility for each other – that others take for granted.

There are dozens of important legal rights and responsibilities that the state allows different-sex couples to access as an easy and complete legal package when they marry. But the government offers same-sex couples no way to access a complete set of legal tools. That’s discrimination.

Hawai`i’s reciprocal beneficiary laws do offer something – but it’s a random, incomplete selection of protections and minimal responsibilities. There are many holes. And that makes it hopelessly confusing and unworkable.

The rights at stake here range from the most simple – such as the ability of a couple when they commit to be legally bound as a family, to take a shared family name. To the most arcane – things impossible even for most lawyers to understand – such as protection from the state taking action against a couple’s home when one partner needs nursing home care through the Medicaid system and the other needs to keep living in their home.

And then there’s the rights no couples want to think about but some inevitably will need – access to family court to manage disputes about money and debts and child support and property, if the relationship should fail. Just like heterosexual couples, lesbian and gay couples should be held to their promises to each other by the same family law rules that apply to other Hawai`i families.

This case is not about marriage. It is about the State not taking care of all its people.

It’s not about special rights. It’s about everyone having some way to access the same basic legal tools every family needs to take care of each other.

We filed this case today because courts exist to ensure that everyone has the same basic rights, whether they are the majority or a small minority – like the lesbian and gay families standing here today, who have been waiting a very long time to bring themselves within the protective legal structures of their home state’s civil laws.

Thank you.