UK to extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples

LONDON – Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May says the government will change the law so opposite-sex couples can enter into civil partnerships.

The decision was announced Tuesday at a conference of May’s Conservative Party. It followed a U.K. Supreme Court ruling that not making heterosexual couples eligible for civil partnerships was “incompatible” with human rights laws.

The ruling came in a case involving a couple that wanted to avoid the “patriarchal baggage” of marriage. Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan argued that limiting the partnerships to same-sex couples was discriminatory.

Same-sex couples have been able to form civil partnerships in Britain since 2005, giving them the legal protections, adoption and inheritance rights as married heterosexual couples.

The country legalized same-sex marriage in 2014.