The city of Seattle protects people from discrimination in employment, housing, and other areas based on a broad range of protected traits. These protections soon might expand further. Near the end of last year, the Seattle Human Rights Commission urged the City Council to adopt legislation prohibiting discrimination based on family and relationship structure.
A bill pursuing this objective has advanced deep into the city’s legislative process. Last week, it passed a key milestone when the three-member Housing, Arts, and Civil Rights Committee of the City Council voted unanimously in its favor. Tomorrow, the full Council will hold a meeting at which it will vote on the bill. If it becomes a law, it would take effect on June 1, 2027. The Seattle Office for Civil Rights would oversee its enforcement.
The current anti-discrimination ordinance already includes “sexual orientation” as a protected class. The bill aims to broaden and clarify this definition in three ways. It would recognize gender identities outside the male/female gender binary, and it would explicitly include “pansexuality” and “asexuality” as sexual orientations that would qualify for civil rights protections. Finally, it would protect people from discrimination based on having consensual relationships with multiple partners, such as non-monogamous relationships. The bill states that this last provision would fit within the current ban on discrimination based on “attitudes, preferences, beliefs, and practices” related to a person’s sexual orientation. In addition to employment and housing, areas affected by these anti-discrimination provisions would include business licensing, places of “public accommodation” like retail stores and restaurants, park usage, and bias-free policing.
Seattle wouldn’t be the first American city to implement anti-discrimination protections for non-traditional relationship structures. As the initial letter from the Human Rights Commission pointed out, cities such as Cambridge in Massachusetts and Oakland in California have adopted similar measures. The Washington State capital city of Olympia has taken this step as well. While most cities with these provisions are on the East or West Coast, the city of Hazel Park in Michigan also enacted protections for polyamorous relationships this summer.
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