The US’s biggest grocery retailer is being sued for discriminating against a same-sex couple.
A woman is suing Wal-Mart, a company, which owns the UK Asda brand, after failing to offer health insurance to her wife after DOMA was struck down.
Jacqueline Cote, 52, is suing her employer, Wal-Mart after failing to extend its insurance benefits to its gay employees after the Defence of Marriage Act, DOMA, was struck down in June 2013. Wal-Mart only started including same-sex couples in January 2014.
Cotes is alleging that her wife, Diana “Dee” Smithson had spent, according to a complaint filed on Tuesday in Boston federal court, in excess of $150,000 (£95,913) on medical treatments fighting ovarian cancer, which were uninsured. She claims it is in violation of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Wal-Mart did extend insurance benefits to gay couples in January 2014.
In an email to Bloomberg who originally reported the story, Brian Nick, a spokesman for Wal-Mart said, “[Walmart’s] benefits coverage previous to the 2014 update was consistent with the law.”
Ms. Cote’s class action suit will be the first of its kind since the United States Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal across all of the USA.
