Seattle moved a step closer on Wednesday to becoming the tenth American city to adopt civil rights protections for polyamorous and other “nontraditional” relationships.
A unanimous vote among the three members of the Seattle City Council’s Housing, Arts and Civil Rights Committeeforwarded a proposal to the full council that would amend sections of the Seattle Municipal Code to “recognize genders outside the gender binary, recognize pansexuality and asexuality as orientations, and include consensual relationships with multiple partners as an element of attitudes, preferences, and practices pertaining to sexual orientation.”
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The protections would apply to employment, housing, business licensure, places of public accommodation, park usage, and “bias-free policing,” according to the proposal.
Seattle would follow Portland, West Hollywood, Berkeley, California, and a handful of other cities in adopting the expanded protectionsagainst discrimination. Under the bill, residents facing unfair treatment could file complaints and seek remedy through Seattle’s Office for Civil Rights.
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The ordinance’s goal is to “prohibit discrimination based on family and relationship structure as fully as possible,” Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, the bill’s sponsor, said at the committee hearing on Wednesday, as reported by Axios.
“We all know that every family is different, and we need to be clear that every family receives equal protection under the law,” Rinck said. “And chosen family is family.”
“This update reflects how people actually live,” Rinck added.
Testifying in favor of the proposal, Tyson Holman, co-chair of theSeattle Coalition for Family & Relationship Equity,told council members that “being out” as poly can expose partners to discrimination, causing some people to “pretend to not love.”
“That’s why these protections are so important,” Holman said. “We don’t have to worry about losing our homes or our jobs or our families.”
In December, Seattle’s Human Rights Commission urged both the mayor and the Seattle City Council to take up the proposed legislation, calling it a “necessary and timely” evolution of the Emerald City’s commitment to inclusivity.
The legal framework guiding that commitment “was largely built at a time when only a narrow definition of family and relationship was recognized,” the commission said. “As a result, many Seattle residents remain vulnerable to real and material harm.”
“People in multi-parent or multi-partner families, multi-generational households, chosen families, single parents, intentionally single individuals, and those in consensually nonmonogamous, asexual, or aromantic relationships continue to face discrimination in housing, employment, and public life simply because their family structures fall outside outdated norms,” they added.
Somerville, Massachusetts, near Boston, became the first city in the country torecognize polyamorous relationshipsin 2020, with an expanded domestic partner ordinance. That legislation granted poly partners the same rights as married couples, including hospital visitation and conferring health insurance benefits. In 2023, the city extended specific anti-discrimination protections in employment and for police interactions.
As well as Somerville, Portland, Berkley and West Hollywood, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Oakland, California; Olympia, Washington; Astoria, Oregon; and Hazel Park, Michigan have all instituted similar protections.
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