Unemployment benefits denied for member of same-sex union
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania in a decision authored by Attorney Bierbach’s Pitt Law classmate, Judge Doris Smith-Ribner, has denied unemployment benefits for a member of a same-sex union, who left her job to follow her partner. In the case of Procito v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review, Judge Smith-Ribner upheld a decision by the Unemployment Compensation Board of Review affirming a referee’s conclusion that Procito was not entitled to receive unemployment compensation after leaving her full-job in Pennsylvania in order to follow her domestic partner, who had decided to move to Florida to escape a stressful environment and to be closer to her special needs son. Judge Smith-Ribner agreed with the Board’s determination that unemployment benefits only apply to legally married couples. Judge Smith-Ribner then went on to state that that issue was really not before the Court, as the claimant had failed to prove that either she or her partner had necessitous and compelling cause to stop working.
The dissent in the case was filed by another of Attorney Bierbach’s law classmates at the University of Pittsburgh, Judge Rochelle S. Friedman. Judge Friedman argued in her opinion that the constitutional question raised is a unique and an important one since it concerns how a doctrine that is suppose to applicable only to married couples should be applied to couples that cannot legally marry.