Nine gay public employees who successfully sued the state and the city of Anchorage to get benefits for their long-term partners still can't enroll them in their health plans or other essentials.

It's been two months since the Alaska Supreme Court unanimously ruled on the six-year-old lawsuit, saying the governments illegally discriminated when they offered benefits to employees' spouses but not to employees' long-term domestic partners.

In the Byzantine world of benefits packages and amid the controversy that clouds officially recognizing gay couples, the ruling was not the end.

The court left the disputed benefits systems in place temporarily and asked the city and state to suggest ways to extend benefits to the excluded partners. Only the municipality has made its pitch so far, saying it intends to comply with the ruling.

There's often a backlash against courts when they rewrite policy. The court in this case suggested in its opinion that perhaps enforcement of the ruling should be delayed so the Legislature or the governor can come up with a fix on their own.

The Alaska Civil Liberties Union, representing the employees and their partners, agrees with that idea. It asked the court to give the two governments until May 10 "to bring their employment benefits programs into compliance with the Alaska Constitution."

But a showdown in the Legislature appears likely before then. Gov. Frank Murkowski has vowed to fight the ruling by pushing for a constitutional amendment after the Legislature reconvenes next week. And at least two state legislators, Sen. Fred Dyson, R-Eagle River, and Rep. John Coghill, R-North Pole, support that move.

"I think if we start recognizing other relationships and putting them congruent to marriage, we're going to have a problem," said Coghill, House Majority Leader.

Murkowski spokesman Mike Chambers said the governor feels Alaskans spoke "very clearly on this issue" when they voted overwhelmingly in 1998 to ban gay marriage.

The 1998 Marriage Amendment, which says marriage can only be between one man and one woman, does not address benefits. Nor does it prohibit Alaska governments from offering benefits to employees' long-term, unwed partners. Some governments, such as the City of Juneau, already do.

It's one thing to give governments the choice to offer such benefits and quite another to force them to, said Dyson, who feels the Supreme Court was "off the reservation" with its decision. The people, not the courts, should decide what kinds of relationships their governments should acknowledge, he said.

"I suspect we will try to put something on the ballot, to let the people decide what relationships they believe come up to the standard of a family," he said. "I know this is really radical, but I trust the judgment of the people on these things."

"With all due respect to Fred, this is not about how you define a family," said Rep. Les Gara, D-Anchorage. "This case has nothing to do with gay marriage. Voters have been very clear on gay marriage."

None of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit have challenged the state's Marriage Amendment. Their main argument was that denying benefits to employees' long-term partners violates Article 1 of the Alaska Constitution, which says, in part: "This constitution is dedicated to the principle ... that all persons are equal and entitled to equal rights, opportunities and protection under the law."

The Supreme Court said same-sex couples are caught in a Catch 22: They can never become eligible for the benefits offered married employees by the government because the government says they cannot marry.

"That the Marriage Amendment effectively prevents same-sex couples from marrying does not automatically permit the government to treat them differently in other ways," the opinion said.

The court concluded that the spousal limitations in the benefits programs affect public employees with long-term partners differently than public employees who are married, even though the two are similarly situated. That violates the Alaska Constitution's equal protection clause, the ruling said.

It is unclear whether there is enough support in the Senate and House to put a constitutional amendment before voters; two-thirds of legislators in each body would have to support the move to get it on the ballot.

Gara and Dyson both predicted that a vote on the issue would not divide along strict party lines. Sen. Kim Elton, D-Juneau, said predicting the outcome is like looking into a Magic Eight Ball.

"I think that we have the kind of legislative culture that may encourage Sen. Dyson's efforts," Elton said. "I would hope that we could deal with the issue in a way that it will preclude people from seeking justice in the court system."

"Every citizen is assured of certain basic rights, regardless what the majority thinks," he said. If individual rights were left to the majority to decide, he added, many people wouldn't have them. "The majority would see them as somehow different."

House Majority Leader Coghill said he would be asking a lot of questions in the upcoming session about how domestic couples are defined. If anyone could claim such a relationship and become eligible for benefits, he said, "that could be real economic chaos."

Gara said legislators would have to find a solution that clearly defined when someone was in a long-term, committed relationship versus a casual one. Anything less would offend people's sensibilities, he said.

"I would hope the Legislature would sit down and be thoughtful about this," Gara said. "This sort of visceral reaction people have had to this ruling will lead to bad policy."

"You can honor the prohibition against gay marriage and still offer health benefits to more people," Gara said. "I personally think we should be finding ways to get more people health insurance, not less people health insurance."

Alaska's No. 1 private-sector employer, Providence Health System Alaska, started offering the benefits today. The organization's chief human resources officer, Russell Grange, said Providence decided to make the switch prior to the Alaska Supreme Court decision (the ruling applies only to governments).

Grange said Providence has hospitals Outside where domestic partner benefits are required by law, so offering them here made sense in terms of company-wide uniformity. He said the move is also intended to help attract talent and "to deal with a rising social issue as pro-actively and fairly as possible."

Providence, BP Exploration, the City of Juneau, the university -- all have similar systems for determining when employees' partners are eligible for benefits. The process often includes showing proof of a shared residence and financial interdependence, among other things.

The Municipality of Anchorage, which said two months ago it would accept the Supreme Court's ruling, is planning a system modeled after the one used by the City of Juneau.

The municipality said it could provide certain domestic partner benefits, such as health insurance, within 150 days of the court's final order. Other benefits -- offered to city employees through unions or the state -- could take longer to fix.

Municipal Attorney Fred Boness said the city doesn't know how many employees might apply for domestic partner benefits once they're offered. Other institutions have seen 2 to 3 percent of their employees apply once the benefits were made available, he said.

Boness said there's actually a disincentive for employees to apply for domestic partner benefits because under federal law the benefits are considered taxable income.

Boness said an employee who gets benefits for a spouse does not have to pay taxes on the value of the benefits. But the rules are different for employees enrolling their un-wed domestic partners.

The state's brief to the court has not yet been filed and is not due until later this week. The Department of Law has declined to comment on what its position will be.

MacLeod-Ball said that despite the opposition on the horizon, he still thinks the court should give the Legislature and executive branches time to fix the problem on their own. The more branches of government that sign on to the idea of equal protection for all Alaskans, he said, the better.

If the state constitution is amended, it will not affect the plaintiffs in the suit, MacLeod-Ball said; such changes cannot be retroactively applied.

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