A new law in Michigan prevents many public agencies from giving their employees’ domestic partners health insurance, and the ACLU is stepping in to stop it. Four public employees, their domestic partners, and the ACLU are teaming up in a federal lawsuit. 

Officials from the ACLU of Michigan suspect the measure does not have any financial benefits, but exists purely to keep LGBT families on a different level from heterosexual families. Based on the new law, domestic partners would lose health insurance and the state would lose revenue from the taxes they previously paid on their health insurance.

ACLU staff attorney Amanda C. Goad said the law is especially harsh during an economic downturn, when the state should be helping families save money. 

“It’s unconstitutional for the state of Michigan to deprive a small number of workers the means to take care of their loved ones when other similarly situated workers do have access to family coverage,” she said in a statement Thursday.

We’ll see how this turns out. Props to the ACLU for stepping in to right a serious wrong.