Baker Botts partner Earl B. Austin and associate Sarah Reeves have stepped in as defense counsel to Aetna in a pending civil rights class action. The suit, which alleges that the health insurer engages in sex discrimination by denying LGBTQ, intersex and nonbinary individuals equal access to fertility treatment, was filed Sept. 9 in New York Southern District Court by Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel and the National Women’s Law Center. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick, is 1:21-cv-07619, Goidel v. Aetna, Inc.
The proposed class-action suit claims that Aetna’s policy provides coverage to individuals with “infertility,” defined as those who, after 12 months, haven’t gotten pregnant after having unprotected sex or after receiving “therapeutic donor insemination.” LGBTQ individuals, however, cannot conceive through sexual intercourse, relying instead on fertility treatments such as intrauterine insemination (IUI) or in vitro fertilization (IVF).
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