DFL Senators have offered a bill that would allow domestic partners to receive benefits if the public employees union includes those benefits in collective bargaining. The benefits would apply to couples who cannot legally marry in Minnesota.

Here’s the text of the bill:

Subd. 18a. Domestic partner. (a) “Domestic partner” means a person who has entered into a committed interdependent relationship with another adult, where the partners: are responsible for each other’s basic common welfare; share a common residence and intend to do so indefinitely; are not related by blood or adoption to an extent that would prohibit marriage in
this state; and are legally competent and qualified to enter into a contract. For purposes of this subdivision, domestic partners may share a common residence, even if they do not each have a legal right to possess the residence or one or both domestic partners possess additional real property. If one domestic partner temporarily leaves the common residence with the intention to return, the domestic partners continue to share a common residence for the purposes of this subdivision.

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If a collective bargaining agreement or plan provides state paid health insurance for spouses of employees, the insurance must be made available to domestic partners of state employees on the same terms and conditions.

Senators sponsoring the legislation are all DFLers: Sen Sandy Pappas (St. Paul), Tony Lourey (Kerrick), Barb Goodwin (Columbia Heights), Patricia Torres Ray (Minneapolis), and Chris Eaton (Brooklyn Center).

For years, DFL legislators have pushed for domestic partner benefits for state employees. And those employees briefly had them when Gov. Jesse Ventura included them in the state labor contract, but a Republican House and Gov. Tim Pawlenty stripped them out in 2003.

Several other bills have been floating around the Capitol over the last decade but Pawlenty refused to sign them. He vetoed such a measure in 2008.

A measure in 2011 was voted down in the Republican controlled House.