The City of West Hollywood is seeking to protect polyamorous families under a new ordinance prohibiting discrimination against people in consensual non-monogamous relationships.
On March 2, the West Hollywood City Council approved an ordinance that updated the city’s municipal code to extend anti-discrimination protections to multi-parent families and relationships involving more than two people. The protections cover areas including housing, healthcare, city services and businesses, though questions of state-level legality remain.
Councilmember Chelsea Byers said she expects that the measure could support a multitude of family structures, especially those being targeted by the Trump administration.
“We as a city can secure and provide stronger protections and benefits to stabilize those communities to create more security,” Byers said. “Emotionally, but also financially; access to their housing, to jobs, to healthcare, all of that is under threat if those protections aren’t in place.”
The ordinance also created a task force to implement a registration program that could allow polyamorous partners to access some legal benefits associated with marriage within city limits.
Without legal recognition, polyamorous groups often have to rely on attorneys to create legal agreements to secure protections similar to those afforded to couples, a process that can be costly.
Grace Ganz Blumberg, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the ordinance will not allow the domestic partnership of more than two people, noting that only the state has the authority to pass such legislation.
The ordinance will partially help reduce stigmatization of polyamorous families, said California attorney Alana Chazan. Her Los Angeles-based law firm, All Family Legal, provides services to polyamorous families and families with more than two parents.
Chazan said polyamory is often misunderstood or confused with polygamy, a marital structure that involves one person having multiple spouses and that is typically hierarchical. Polyamory, by contrast, refers to the practice of being romantically involved with, but not necessarily legally married to, multiple partners.
“This is a very, very stigmatized group of people, and the reality is that these family structures exist, and people in these family structures have children and are making families,” Chazan said. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing to necessarily protect people seeking to fight discrimination and destigmatize such families, especially when it’s all consenting adults.”
Chazan noted that a Los Angeles Times article that reported on the ordinance received over 100 comments from readers, most of which were heavily criticizing the practice of polyamory and the measure.
West Hollywood is not the first city to recognize polyamous families. In 2024, Oakland and Berkeley passed legislation banning discrimination based on family-structure. Similar protections recognizing multi-partner relationships were also passed in Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2020 and 2021.
These protections tend to be passed in cities that have historically protected non-traditional family structures, Chazan said.
Byers said the long-term goal is to expand similar protections nationwide, eventually at the state and federal level.
“We’re showing that all population sizes, budget sizes, geographic considerations, these are protections that people need to live the diverse lifestyles that they choose,” she said.