Shea v. Board of Selectmen

Beset by funding cuts and economic difficulties, like so many communities in the Commonwealth, the town of Ware on April 2, 1990, decided, by vote of its board of selectmen (board), that elected town officials who do not regularly work twenty hours per week would no longer be eligible for participation in the town’s group health insurance plan as of July 1, 1990, the beginning of the town’s next fiscal year.2 Five elected officials, the plaintiffs here, whose positions did not involve working twenty hours or more per week, had been approved in 1968 by the board as being eligible for…