A federal judge Monday refused to throw out a lawsuit in which FedEx is denying a widow the survivor pension of her spouse, a longtime employee who died of cancer.
Stacey Schuett and Lesly Taboada-Hall were a couple for 30 years before they married on June 19, 2013, at home in California with their two teen children and close family members and friends. It was one day before Taboada-Hall died after a three-year battle with uterine cancer and six days before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
Taboada-Hall had been the family’s primary breadwinner and was fully vested in her pension at FedEx, where she had worked for more than 26 years. Schuett had stayed home to care for the children while pursuing an independent career illustrating children’s books. (One that she wrote as well, Somewhere in the World Right Now
Last January, Schuett filed a lawsuit against FedEx after it refused to provide her with Taboada-Hall’s spousal pension benefits. The shipping company’s retirement plan defines “Spouse” by incorporating Section 3 of DOMA, and claims it is thus limited to opposite-sex spouses. This was the same section, however, that the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional.
Because the plan is federally regulated (under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA)), it must provide survivor benefits to all married participants. Schuett says that “FedEx has improperly insisted that it must continue to apply the Plan’s definition of spouse incorporating the now-unconstitutional law, rather than current law, in determining eligibility for benefits.”
Schuett told the Washington Post in 2014 that “Without Lesly’s pension, I am struggling to afford college tuition for the first of our two children.” She stressed the urgency of full marriage equality. Now we have marriage equality, and she is still fighting for her family’s hard-earned due.
I have to wonder why FedEx is continuing to refuse her. A company of its size (65th in the Fortune 500) won’t see a significant change to its bottom line by providing her with her benefits. The company has scored 85/100 on HRC’s Corporate Equality Index, a respectable if not perfect score. Surely they know that a blot like this lawsuit won’t do them any favors with the LGBTQ community. Surely they know we send as many packages as anyone.
Schuett is represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), Feinberg Jackson Worthman & Wasow, the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, and the Birnie Law Office. I’m guessing they send important papers to each other via UPS or the U.S. Postal Service.
Let’s hope justice delivers.
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