Class Action Lawsuit Alleges New York, City Leaders Illegally Deny Gay Male Employees IVF Healthcare Benefits

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A proposed class action lawsuit accuses the City of New York and four current and former city leaders of discriminating against gay male employees by denying them coverage for in vitro fertilization (IVF) under the city’s healthcare plan.

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The 41-page lawsuit was filed by a former New York City assistant district attorney and his husband, who claim they are among thousands of gay men who have been refused IVF benefits as a result of the city’s allegedly discriminatory policy.

The suit contends that the defendants—Mayor Eric L. Adams, Commissioner of the Office of Labor Relations Renee Campion and the previous titleholders of both positions—unfairly exclude gay male employees and their partners from receiving IVF benefits under the city’s healthcare plan despite providing access to such to workers who are single women or part of a heterosexual or same-sex female couple.

Under the city’s healthcare plan, an employee or plan participant cannot qualify for IVF benefits unless they are diagnosed as infertile, the case says. However, the complaint takes issue with the city’s definition of “infertility,” and argues that it discriminates against gay male workers for whom IVF is the “only feasible way to conceive a child.”

By the city’s standards, a woman who is unable to conceive with her male partner after a one-year period of unprotected sexual intercourse is considered “infertile” and qualifies for IVF benefits under the healthcare plan, the filing relays. Similarly, a single woman or a female in a same-sex relationship who undergoes intrauterine insemination without a resultant pregnancy is also deemed “infertile,” as the city defines the term, and can qualify for IVF benefits, the lawsuit explains.

In contrast, the city’s healthcare plan does not offer any avenue for gay men to receive these benefits because they cannot prove “infertility” in accordance with the city’s definition, the suit asserts.

In other words, the case claims, the city’s “exclusionary” definition of the term means that “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 alleges that the defendants have denied gay male city employees equal treatment and made it much more difficult for them to have biological children than other workers and their partners.

The plaintiffs say that although they are “eager to grow their family,” IVF is prohibitively expensive when paying for it out of pocket.

“For [the plaintiffs] and so many other gay male employees and their partners, the city’s discriminatory policy and the concomitant high cost of IVF have prevented them from conceiving children in the same way that all other city employees are eligible to conceive,” the filing contends.

The lawsuit looks to represent any gay men who, since May 9, 2021, were current or former employees of the City of New York—or the male spouses of such—and eligible to participate in the city’s healthcare plan, were interested in or sought to use IVF or obtain reimbursement for IVF from a city healthcare plan, and were deemed ineligible for or denied access to IVF under such a plan because they are single gay men or males in a same-sex relationship.

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