Massachusetts City Passes Law to Protect Poly Families

A new law in Somerville, Massachusetts grants legal protections against discrimination towards people in poly relationships and other nontraditional family structures.

Last month, the city released three ordinances defining a “family or relationship structure” as a protected class. The ordinances specifically applied anti-discrimination protections within police interactions and employment. A fourth ordinance is seeking to provide equal housing opportunities to those in nontraditional relationships.

According to a 2016 study in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, an estimated 4 to 5% of Americans are in polyamorous relationships, and 21% reported engaging in some form of consensual non-monogamy.

In 2020, the city of Somerville passed legislation allowing for hospital visitations for those in relationships involving more than one adult, a right usually reserved for married couples. Currently, California, Washington, Louisiana, and Rhode Island have explicitly recognized families with multiple parents, such as step-families, adoptive families, and families with polyamorous parents.

Somerville City Council Member Willie Burnley Jr. has been a part of the poly community for eight years and helped to pass the ordinance that would protect families like his own.

“It’s really just a personal choice to say I’m not going to hold back my love for people just because I have a preexisting relationship,” Burnley Jr. says. “I want to be in connection with as many people who want to be in connection with me.”

Related Article: The Polyamorous Community and the Fight for Acceptance

Andy Izenson, senior legal director at the Chosen Family Law Center, which advocates on behalf of non-traditional families, helped craft the text of the ordinances.

“In the law, and in our society, there’s a singular definition of family that’s embedded in everything, in how our society and legal system work. That impacted families who don’t look like that. The legal and cultural understanding of what a family is—heterosexual, cisgender married parents living with a child or children that are genetically related to them, and no one else—less than half of American kids live in a family that looks like that,” Izenson says.

According to Izenson, the most common legal battle for poly families is child custody. Historically, nontraditional families such as one with more than two parents, same-gender relationships, and even biracial relationships have been discriminated against via the law. Many judges conclude, without supporting evidence, that people who engage in polyamory are less moral, less stable, and less capable to care for children compared to monogamous people. In addition, family courts have mistaken poly relationships to be equivalent to “wife-swapping” or casual, sex-only swinging.

“A lot of my work is in family courts and divorce, in particular with clients who live in nontraditional family structures, whether that’s polyamory, which is sort of the most glamorous and well-publicized, but also other family structures that do not resemble that of a married, heterosexual monogamous couple,” Izenson says.

“That includes families where parents are taking care of grandchildren or queer families who are co-parenting in a way that is creative and beautiful but is not supported by law. That includes families like mine, which are networks of queer kinship that are fully and open-heartedly committed to mutual care and building lives together, but are not able to access legal protections.”

While the ordinance passed in Somerville does not directly mention child custody, advocates are hopeful that this is still a step in the right direction.