Megan Katz hasn\u2019t always been so forthcoming about the fact that she dates outside her marriage.<\/p>\n
Katz, 51, a librarian in West Hollywood, has two children with her \u201cnesting partner,\u201d and another partner whom she does not live with. She has not experienced prejudice at work or in her neighborhood but knows others who have. She also fears her kids could be ostracized or face discrimination because of her romantic arrangement. <\/p>\n
\u201cI do have some consternation,\u201d Katz said. \u201cOnce you\u2019re out, you can\u2019t put that cat back in the bag. You can\u2019t unring that bell.\u201d <\/p>\n
But in early March, Katz proclaimed herself \u201cproudly polyamorous\u201d in support of a novel law championed in West Hollywood to protect polyamorous domestic partnerships.<\/p>\n
West Hollywood\u2019s five-person City Council on March 2 unanimously approved advancing a registry of multi-partner domestic relationships. It\u2019s the latest of a few cities in the U.S. to pursue legal protection for groups of more than two adults living in a single household who are romantically or otherwise committed to one another. Such family structures, experts say, can face systemic barriers in housing, healthcare, education and other services where existing policies often assume dual income or nuclear households.<\/p>\n
Actual implementation of a plural domestic partnership registry, however, is still at least several months away. The council established a task force to work out the details, and return to the council within six months with recommendations on next stepsat which point the council would take another vote.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the council outlawed discrimination against polyamorous people and others in nontraditional family structures, such as multigenerational immigrant households. The anti-discrimination law, which adds family or relationship structure as a protected class in the city alongside race, religion, gender and other categories, was finalized Monday and will go into effect in mid-April.<\/p>\n
West Hollywood Councilmember Chelsea Lee Byers, who introduced the anti-discrimination ordinance, said in an interview that the protections were \u201cfrankly long overdue\u201d and that giving people other options is crucial amid efforts by the Trump administration to erode LGBTQ+ rights and housing affordability issues more broadly. <\/p>\n
\u201cWest Hollywood is home to people who build families and choose diverse lifestyles and that\u2019s long been a part of our community\u2019s existence,\u201d Byers said. \u201cEspecially in despairing economic times we need to ensure people aren\u2019t being denied access.\u201d<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s very first poly-friendly city ordinance came about almost by happenstance. <\/p>\n
In 2020, as Somerville, Mass., rushed to get domestic partnership law on the books amid the spread of the coronavirus, one City Council member suggested to fellow officials working on the law that the registered relationships not be limited to two adults. It meant the law, which affords partners some of the rights held by spouses in marriage, could be applied to individuals in committed relationships with multiple people. <\/p>\n
It was a \u201cserendipitous\u201d win for a constituency that had not quite consolidated, said Ann Tweedy, a professor at the University of South Dakota School of Law, who has studied polyamory from a legal perspective.<\/p>\n
After the Somerville ordinance passed, several attorneys and other advocates across the country exploring polyamory law banded together to form the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition to ensure those drafting future legislation had the necessary support and expertise.<\/p>\n
Their efforts are yielding real gains. Two other Massachusetts cities, Cambridge <\/a>and Arlington<\/a>, followed Somerville\u2019s example in 2021. In 2024, Berkeley and Oakland passed ordinances outlawing discrimination based on family structure, including polyamorous relationships. In recent weeks, the Oregon cities of Portland <\/a>and Astoria, as well as Olympia, Wash.,<\/a> have advanced similar protections.<\/p>\n The laws will make a difference in seemingly mundane ways. If a parent wants their domestic partners to pick up their child at school, these protections allow that. Partners can use that recognition to visit each other in the hospital, Tweedy and other legal experts said.<\/p>\n On top of that, the \u201cemotional security\u201d of just knowing your partners are recognized seems small but is important, Tweedy said. The anti-discrimination protections, she said, are \u201clegally significant\u201d because they put landlords, healthcare companies and others on notice. <\/p>\n Brett Chamberlin, executive director of the Oakland-based Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Nonmonogamy, or OPEN, said the group has helped push for such policies in California and elsewhere because nonmonogamy is greatly stigmatized and new legislation \u201crecognizes the fact that most households don\u2019t reflect the mythical arrangement of a nuclear family.\u201d<\/p>\n Chamberlin and other advocates, see it as an opportunity to build protections for a broad group of people, such as immigrant households that depend on extended family members for child care and support. Many Americans, research shows, find nuclear family structures isolating and insufficient, with some choosing to delay or avoid marriage. The new laws help to recognize other connections that people rely on.<\/p>\n \u201cThe current legal system was never designed for all of us,\u201d said Christina Fialho, an attorney and founder of bisexual media representation advocacy group Rewrite the BiLine, who first brought the idea of polyamory protections to West Hollywood Councilmember Byers about a year ago. \u201cCities are realizing families come in many forms and that they should protect, not police those relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n Not everyone supports the recognition of polyamorous relationships, however. When Berkeley and Oakland were on the brink of passing their laws, the California Family Council, a politically conservative religious advocacy group, announced its opposition, calling the affirmation of polyamorous relationships<\/a> \u201ccultural suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n Rose Montoya, 30, a Los Angeles-area queer activist, said that as a transgender woman who for a decade was estranged from her family, she often relies on friends rather than blood relatives. During a recent health crisis, an emergency surgery to remove a cyst, Montoya said she wanted support in the hospital but did not have any options available to her. <\/p>\n \u201cIn moments like that, I think about, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m not married … so legally I don\u2019t have a lot of protections,\u2019\u201d Montoya said. <\/p>\n Fialho said that realistically, additional rights will come in phases, given that advocates are \u201cup against a mainstream legal system.\u201d West Hollywood is a case in point, she noted, having been, in 1985, the first city in the U.S. to establish a domestic partnership registry, though it did not extend insurance coverage to city employees\u2019 unmarried partners until 1989.<\/a> <\/p>\n Technical challenges have made some cities reluctant to recognize plural domestic partnerships, according to a paper Tweedy published last year<\/a>. Berkeley, for example, had considered a polyamory anti-discrimination law as early as 2017 but did not follow up out of concern it would have to insure an employee\u2019s multiple partners, Tweedy wrote. In some cities that recognize plural domestic partnerships, city employees can cover multiple registered partners under municipal benefits, a benefit not required by private insurers.<\/p>\n The polyamorous community is bigger than many realize, said Amy C. Moors, an assistant professor of psychology at Chapman University who has researched the demographics of polyamorous people and discrimination against such relationships. <\/p>\n