Wal-Mart Same-Sex Benefits Puts Pressure on Hold-Outs

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s decision to extend health-care benefits to workers’ same-sex partners removes one of the biggest holdouts and adds pressure on other resistant companies to follow suit.

“You can go to your board, and all of a sudden you’re not swimming against the stream as much as you were yesterday,” said Wallace Hopp, associate dean of faculty and research at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business. “You can say, ‘Jeez, Wal-Mart does it.’”