Olympia may become first WA city with protections for polyamorous families
The Olympia City Council unanimously approved a referral Tuesday from council member Robert Vanderpool to draft an ordinance that would ultimately create protections for polyamorous families and other diverse family structures.
The council specifically approved a referral “to introduce an ordinance for City Council consideration based on available model legislation, with revisions informed by City Attorney review and public comment during the legislative process,” according to council documents.
According to Vanderpool’s referral, if adopted the ordinance would add “family or relationship structure” to protected groups within city code. It states the city-specific legislative language can be drafted by the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition alongside the city’s attorney.
The council hopes to adopt an ordinance on Feb. 10, to coincide with Valentine’s Day the following Saturday, according to the referral.
Vanderpool said during the meeting that the ordinance opens conversation for other cities, the county, the state and federal government to add similar protections for all family types.
“Moreover, family and relationship structure includes, and is not limited to, single parent, multi generational, blended, chosen, non-monogamous and polyamory households, homes that have existed since the concept of homes existed,” Vanderpool said. “Just going to say that whenever there was a home, one of these existed, but are often not protected as a category.”
He said the ordinance is for anyone who lives with anyone. He said it could be their mother-in-law, their friends or family, non-blood relatives and even a single mother or father.
“It could be a member of the LGBTQIA2S+ community for whom we have a sanctuary city status,” he said. “This is thinking of our sanctuary city and codifying protections for folks and other folks that are not in that community.”
Vanderpool said it gives folks legal protections and more civil liberties at a time when the federal government “acts as if liberties don’t matter or exist.”
In an interview with The Olympian on Jan. 14, Vanderpool said the ordinance comes after several community members have reached out asking for expanded protections. He gave real-world examples of how the ordinance could play out in the city. He said it’s the same as someone being able to take a person to court over being discriminated against over housing for their race.
“It says that someone could use the city ordinance code and say: ‘Hey, listen, I’m being discriminated against,’” he said.
He said it could also involve a medical situation and non-blood relatives needing to help make important decisions or see a loved one in the hospital. If it ends up coming to the court of law, people could cite the city ordinance to show their relationship is a protected class.
“What we’re doing is we’re putting a new class into the city ordinance next to the other ones, and so that as an Olympia resident, they have expanded civil liberties they didn’t have before,” he said. “It expands and allows people in different family structures to have protections.”
Vanderpool said folks with the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy (OPEN), which is headquartered in California, helped draft ordinance language for Olympia based on state code and other ordinances passed in California cities such as Berkeley and Oakland.
OPEN founder Brett Chamberlin told The Olympian on Jan. 14 that Olympia will become the fifth city nationwide and the first in Washington to put these protections in place. He said the cities of Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts, adopted nondiscrimination protections around “family and relationship structure” in 2023. The following year, the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, California, followed suit.
Chamberlain said all the bills are based, to varying degrees, on model legislation developed by the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition.
Council member Yến Huỳnh said she is in favor of adopting an ordinance, but she doesn’t think it’s going to stop people from discriminating against those who have diverse family structures.
“I really believe, unfortunately, that if someone has it in their heart or their mind to discriminate against folks that have diverse family structures, they’re probably going to do it anyway,” she said. “And so what is something that we can give those people with diverse family structures, if they need to be able to hold up and challenge, and is there any legal teeth that we can give them, right?”
Mayor Dontae Payne backed Huỳnh’s comments and said it gives folks facing discrimination based on their family structure the ability to fight back.
According to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data, familial status discrimination accounted for 8.5% of all housing discrimination complaints under the Fair Housing Act in 2024. And a 2024 survey by the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy (OPEN) found “significant stigma and discrimination reported by adults in non-monogamous relationships across multiple life domains.”
Payne said on top of that, approximately 4% to 5% of Americans reportedly have at some point in their life, or currently, are in a non-monogamous relationship.
He said he wanted to stress that “just because we as a society haven’t caught up, or we don’t understand something for ourselves, doesn’t make it inherently negative or evil.”
Payne thanked Vanderpool for stepping out and bringing the referral forward, and said it was a “brave thing to do.”
“You know, this is one of those topics where people either scoff or they chuckle a little bit because they think it’s funny, and it’s something that we just have more learning to do,” he said. “And I think in the meantime, while we do that, people who are experiencing discrimination can’t wait for us to learn.”
This story was originally published January 14, 2026 at 1:40 PM.
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