JUSTICE — PRESIDENT OBAMA DIRECTS FEDERAL AGENCIES TO EXTEND BENEFITS TO EMPLOYEES’ SAME-SEX PARTNERS: Last June, President Obama ordered each federal agency to conduct a thorough review of employee benefits to identify any that can be extended to LGBT employees under existing law. Yesterday, the President released a memorandum announcing that the agencies “have identified a number of benefits,” and they should provide them “to their employees’ same-sex domestic partners [and their children] as permitted by law.” The benefits extension includes credit union membership, hardship transfers, counseling services, family assistance services, access to medical treatment, and accidental death and dismemberment insurance. Also as a result of Obama’s June 2009 order, the Office of Personnel Management announced on Tuesday that partners of gay and lesbian federal employees, U.S. Postal Service workers, and federal retirees can start applying next month for long-term health-care insurance. “For far too long, many of our Government’s hard-working, dedicated LGBT employees have been denied equal access to the basic rights and benefits their colleagues enjoy,” Obama said in yesterday’s memo. “This kind of systemic inequality undermines the health, well-being, and security not just of our Federal workforce, but also of their families and communities.” The President also urged Congress to pass the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act, which would extend the full range of benefits currently enjoyed by Federal employees’ opposite-sex spouses to those of the same-sex.