Gap in Mental Disability Coverage to Get Court Test in Massachusetts

State worker says policy is biased

When Valjeanne Currie went on leave from her state job three years ago to battle schizophrenia, she was also battling a deadline: If she didn't return to work within a year, she learned, she would lose her disability pay, her only source of income.

Currie could continue to collect disability only if she were hospitalized; she was not. But other disabled state workers, people who were fighting cancer or back injuries or other physical disabilities, received checks until they were able to return to work or turned 65, whether or not they were hospitalized.

Frustrated by the different treatment of people with mental and physical disabilities, Currie sued the state's Group Insurance Commission, which manages benefits for state employees. Today, the state's highest court will hear her case, which charges that the commission's policy violates the state's antidiscrimination law.

''This case is an essential one to protect the rights of mentally disabled employees,'' said Currie's lawyer, S. Stephen Rosenfeld. ''It's been a neglected area. ... It's been given superficial treatment, I believe, by other courts and sort of relegated to second-class status as a case. And that's unfortunate.''

If the Supreme Judicial Court rules in Currie's favor, Massachusetts will become the first state to prohibit discrimination against the mentally ill in long-term disability insurance. Only the Minnesota Appeals Court has issued such a ruling, which was later struck down by the state's Supreme Court. Federal courts have also ruled against plaintiffs facing the same plight as Currie who seek protection under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

Currie, 49, declined, through Rosenfeld, to discuss her case. But she will be in court today, listening as the justices discuss her claim.

The most visible fight for equality for the mentally ill has been with the health insurance industry. Many states, including Massachusetts, require health insurance companies to treat mental and physical illnesses the same. Congress has been considering a bill that would write that protection into federal law.

But there is no such requirement for long-term disability policies. While health insurance covers medical costs, disability insurance replaces part of the income sick workers lose when they cannot work for a significant period of time. State employees like Currie cannot collect Social Security for disabled workers.

Assistant Attorney General Ginny Sinkel, who is representing the Group Insurance Commission, declined to comment about the pending case. But in her written arguments to the SJC, Sinkel wrote that the disability policy is not discriminatory because state law does not require the company to treat all disabled people the same.

The state's long-term insurance plan is already financially fragile because employees have the option of joining and they pay the full premiums themselves. That means the people most likely to spend the extra money for disability insurance are people more likely to get sick, Sinkel argued.

And because workers would have to absorb higher premiums to cover the added mental health benefits, she argued, fewer would subscribe. For that reason, Sinkel argued, no insurance company would agree to offer long-term disability insurance with unlimited benefits for mental disabilities.

But Currie's lawyers argue that lingering stigma about mental illness, not financial hardship, drives the Insurance Commission policy. The SJC, they say, should rule for Currie on the same principles that guided states when they forbade health insurance discrimination against other vulnerable groups: women who are victims of domestic abuse, or people with genetic markers indicating high risk of certain diseases.

Currie began working for the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in 1985, but left in June 1999 when her schizophrenia interfered. Her disability benefits were due to expire in June 2000. But she has been guaranteed benefits through March 2003 because of an injunction from a Superior Court judge and a settlement Currie reached with the Hartford Insurance Co., which provides the state's disa