SkyWest accused of bias against gay couples [View All]

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A SkyWest Airlines baggage agent who married his partner last year after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex unions says the airline is breaking state law by refusing to give his husband the free fares it provides to heterosexual spouses.

The airline says Gilbert Caldwell's husband is his "travel companion," entitled to fly at a discount but not for free, Caldwell said. "I am asking SkyWest to give me the same benefits that they give my married heterosexual co-workers."

The case is one of the first discrimination complaints to surface by any of the 18,000 same-sex couples who married in California before the November 2008 passage of Proposition 8, which amended the state Constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

The ballot measure overturned the state Supreme Court's May 2008 ruling that extended marital rights to gays and lesbians. The state court upheld Prop. 8 this past May but ruled that couples who married before the election could remain legally wed.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/31/BAPV1ACLGV.DTL&feed=rss.news