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ECONOMIST LEE BADGETT TESTIFIES BEFORE CALIFORNIA SENATE COMMITTEE ON REVENUE AND TAXATION

26 April 2006
Media Contact: Lee Badgett, Research Director
The Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy
UCLA School of Law
badgett@law.ucla.edu
(310) 825-5847

Click here to read a transcript of Lee Badgett's testimony.

Professor Lee Badgett, Research Director of UCLA Law's Williams Institute, testified before a California Senate Committee today that allowing registered domestic partners to file state income taxes jointly would result in only a small reduction in tax revenues.  

According to Badgett, who testified before the Senate Committee on Revenue and Taxation on SB 1827, allowing registered same-sex partners the same option to file jointly as married couples would “decrease income tax revenues by approximately $8 million per year, or less than .01% of the State's $90 billion budget.” 

In 2004, when the California legislature passed AB 205, California's comprehensive domestic partnership legislation, it provided registered domestic partners with almost all of the rights of married couples under state law.  One of the most significant exceptions was the exclusion of the right to file income taxes jointly.   

Although the Williams Institute provided the legislature with an economic analysis that projected net savings for the State of tens of millions of dollars each year, then-Governor Gray Davis refused to sign AB 205 if any one item of the State's budget would be negatively affected.  Thus, the right to file jointly was specifically taken out of AB 205 during the final days of its consideration.

Today, that last-minute political compromise has become an issue in the California court case seeking marriage rights for same-sex couples.   As a result of the exclusion, lawyers are arguing that providing domestic partnerships for same-sex couples is not only stigmatizing as a “separate but equal” institution, but  is , in fact, separate and unequal, violating core principles of the State's equal protection clause.

Professor Badgett, who is also a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has conducted extensive research on economic and policy issues related to sexual orientation, including several studies of the fiscal impact of granting marriage or domestic partnership rights to same-sex couples.

The Williams Institute is a national think tank dedicated to sexual orientation law and public policy.  It advances law and public policy through rigorous and independent research and scholarship.

Click here to read a transcript of Lee Badgett's testimony.