Polyamory Isn't Legally Protected in the U.S. Why?

Millions of polyamorous Americans remain legally unprotected, leaving poly relationships vulnerable to employment and housing discrimination and excluded from medical and family decision-making.

Design by Sam Donndelinger and Sophie Holland.

This story was originally written for Gay Times Magazine. Keywords: polyamory meaning, poly relationships, types of polyamory, polyamorous marriage

Andrea, a 43-year-old software engineer, was once open about being polyamorous. She told family and friends that she maintained multiple romantic relationships simultaneously, with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. Over the years, that’s meant dating partners separately as well as being part of throuples, in which she had two primary partners.

“I honored the structure of monogamy while I was in it and never pursued anyone else but something always felt off. … I felt very isolated,” she says. “Something was missing. And I was always drawn to the family structures of people who were in open relationships.”

Andrea was accepted when she came out as poly at 31 and never felt the need to hide. But that acceptance narrowed after she came out to a handful of colleagues in the break room at work.

“After that, it definitely started making the workplace more uncomfortable,” Andrea, who lives in New Jersey, told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES.

“They made a lot of jokes about all the threesomes I was having, that I wasn’t leaving enough for everyone else,” she says. “One day, a joke was made that I was like one of the people from the fringe Mormon sects that practice polygamy, that I wanted sister wives.”

“The attitude of believing that my polyamorous identity made it okay to use much more sexual and politically charged language in the workplace was the main thrust of my discomfort. They [assume] that the moment I come out as poly, it’s okay for them to abandon professionalism and use lewd terms in the workplace.”

Andrea says that as time passed, the jokes transformed into more bitter treatment and inappropriate remarks about poly relationships. “I noticed the way they treated me changed. I felt iced out.”

After weeks of enduring the comments and coldness, she brought the issue to her boss. Instead of intervening, her boss told her she was “a liability.” The next day, she was fired.

For many protected classes, including disability, gender identity or expression, race, religion and sexual orientation, repeated targeted comments and hostile behavior in the workplace would meet the legal threshold for harassment or discrimination.

Andrea assumed the same protections would apply to her. But when she sought legal counsel, one attorney told her there was no legal precedent protecting polyamorous people from discrimination and that non-monogamy was not included among protected classes. The lawyer warned her that her chances of winning a lawsuit were unlikely. Ultimately, she couldn’t find counsel that would represent her.

Since then, Andrea, who asked to use a pseudonym because of ongoing legal concerns, says she has become “much more hesitant to be out.”

Polyamorous relationships are emerging into public view at a moment when the traditional household is no longer the norm. Only 18% of American families now fit the nuclear model, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. In 2021, approximately one in six Americans reported wanting to engage in polyamory and one in nine said they had engaged in it at some point. Data from last year found that 61% of Americans are open to non-monogamous relationships.

Despite this, individuals with more than two partners remain almost entirely unprotected under the law. There are no statewide legal protections for people in multi-partner relationships, and only five U.S. municipalities offer protections from discrimination to polyamorous residents. That means the estimated 35 million Americans who have engaged in polyamory are left to navigate restrictive housing codes, workplaces and medical systems that discriminate against their relationships.

“You’re not legally protected,” Alex Chen, director of Harvard Law School’s LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic, told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “It runs the gamut from getting fired at work for identifying as part of the community or having a picture of your partners on your desk to being discriminated against in the hospital.”

Housing with a Limit

For Maya, who asked to only include her first name for job security concerns, it took four months for her polycule—the network of people involved in multiple, simultaneous relationships—to find a place to live.

“In Baltimore County, there’s a housing law that says you can’t have more than four unrelated adults living together,” Maya, who lives in Baltimore, Md, told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “There are six of us in our polycule.”

If a landlord does not want to rent to a polyamorous family, Maya says they can simply cite the law. In one case, her family was encouraged to apply for a house that was within their budget. After disclosing their family structure, they were told the next day that they would not be allowed to apply.

“When we confronted them, the landlord said, ‘By law we can do this, therefore it can’t be discrimination,’” Maya says. “Even though we are a family and have been together for years, they said under the law we were just a bunch of adults trying to rent a house together.”

By the end of the search, Maya says the experience was emotionally and financially draining. A few members of the polycule had leases expiring, and the family was forced to keep living apart and delay moving in together.

“We are stronger together,” she says. “We share financial responsibilities. We share a car. We take care of each other. We have dinner together. For all intents and purposes, we are a family. The same opportunities as everybody else. That’s all we’re asking for here.”

Health Care without Legal Kinship

Bob McGarey, a 74-year-old in Austin, Texas, has been poly since he was in his late 20s. In 2015, he had been with his partners Pam and Leah for 24 and 11 years, respectively. Still, his decades-long commitment to each of them did not translate into legal recognition because he couldn’t marry both of them.

“What makes me poly and why I don’t want to get married stem from the same place,” McGarey told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “I’ve seen so much divorce and unhappiness in monogamous relationships. It’s a belief system that says that there’s only one way to do a romantic, loving relationship. There’s nothing wrong with [monogamy]. I just didn’t find that to be true for me.”

Texas, like many states, recognizes common-law marriage, but only when two people live together as spouses and publicly present as married. Texas law does not allow someone to be married to more than one person at a time, meaning polyamorous relationships don’t qualify for legal recognition.

So when Pam passed away in 2015, McGarey didn’t have legal rights that a married partner would have: He wasn’t able to weigh in on the decision to take her off life support, he didn’t have a legal right to her finances and he wasn’t legally entitled to organize the funeral arrangements. As a result, decisions about her care were left to Pam’s sisters.

“Though I’d been with her for 24 years, I had no [legal] say,” McGarey says. “The two sisters … recognized our relationship and agreed with me on what to do,” he says. “I wouldn’t have had any standing otherwise. It was very painful having to navigate it all, like a hole in my heart. … The law doesn’t just distribute rights, it tells the world how to name your love, and whether it knows how to honor your grief.”

Why Polyamory is Still Treated as Taboo

“People don’t understand what polyamory is,” says 39-year-old Amelia Beaei Pardo, adding that her first poly relationship was “tremendously healing.”

She says being able to be openly poly introduced something she had not experienced before: transparency without punishment, secrecy, guilt and emotional whiplash. She found herself in two relationships at once and “utterly in love with both [her] partners.” Instead of being forced to choose or conceal parts of herself, she could show up fully.

Still, she’s experienced discrimination. In the weeks leading up to the wedding between two of her partners, Beaei Pardo had every reason to believe she would be there. The ceremony was meant to include all of the partners in her polycule by having them in the ceremony, even though only one couple could get married.

But days before the wedding, Beaei Pardo learned that the bride’s parents had intervened and the presence of other partners was no longer allowed. “My partner very lovingly told all of us that actually we wouldn’t be able to be at their wedding,” Beaei Pardo says. “We could watch it on video, but plans had shifted. It was heartbreaking to not be there.”

Beaei Pardo says she was “very sad” not only because she had to miss the wedding, but because it reinforced a familiar hierarchy: One relationship is real and the others are negotiable.

“The state doesn’t see me as a polyamorous person,” Beaei Pardo says. “Without legal acknowledgment, there is no social expectation that poly partners should be included in moments like weddings, hospital visits or family decision-making.”

Beaei Pardo says even limited frameworks—such as civil partnerships or anti-discrimination protections—could help reduce stigma.

Origins of Stigma

The stigma surrounding polyamory is not new. Legal scholars and advocates trace it to the same logic that once made it dangerous to be openly gay at work. The assumption was not simply that difference was unacceptable, but that it was inherently sexual. If someone disclosed a non-normative identity regarding sex or relationships, many people would think that that person must be doing so in order to make an advance.

“That idea is still with us,” says Lily Lamboy, executive director of the Modern Family Institute, a nonprofit supplying education and community for non-traditional families. “‘Why would you tell me that unless you were trying to have sex with me?’ That logic has been used for decades to justify discrimination.”

Part of this discrimination stems from politics and religion. Lamboy says that Project 2025, the 920-page document that laid out plans for a Republican presidency ahead of Trump’s reelection, structures a vision of government that sharply narrows legal recognition of family and relationships, defining “family” strictly as a heterosexual married couple and their children.

“If your political agenda relies on a narrow, biblically defined idea of family … then anything outside that structure becomes a target,” Lamboy says. “That includes gay marriage, polyamorous families, and any form of care that does not fit that mold. That is intentional.”

How Legal Status Changes Public Perception of Poly Relationships

Advocates argue that legal recognition would reduce stigma for poly relationships.

“Passing a nondiscrimination law really goes a long way toward changing social values about whether it’s acceptable to treat people badly,” Lamboy says. “The legalization of same-sex marriage offered a precedent. Before it passed, queer relationships were widely dismissed as illegitimate or unstable, but afterward, public attitudes shifted rapidly.”

Legal recognition is happening in some areas of the U.S. In the past three years, Somerville, Mass. passed the first of three ordinances defining “family or relationship structure” as a protected class, akin to race, gender or sexual orientation. Berkeley and Oakland in California quickly followed suit. And in 2021, Cambridge and Arlington, Mass. allowed for multiple domestic partnership registrations.

Brett Chamberlin, executive director for the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy, which helped organize for the passage of some of these bills, says that legal clarity can relieve a constant burden placed on people in nontraditional relationships.

“I hope for something similar to LGBTQ acceptance,” Chamberlin told Uncloseted Media. “Where if you come out as non-monogamous, you do not have to explain yourself, defend your legitimacy, or reassure people you are not trying to steal their girlfriend. … There has to be awareness and acceptance and understanding. At the same time, it’s much more difficult for people to open up about their own identity, to drive that social awareness if they are not protected.”

“There’s a concept called the shadow of the law. It’s the idea that the law isn’t just what it tells people to do or not do. It’s how people live differently because of what the law doesn’t protect,” says Chen.

Many people remember that the U.S. Supreme Court recognized marriage equality in 2015, but it wasn’t until 2020 that federal law was interpreted to prohibit employment discrimination against LGBTQ people.

“During that five-year period, people could get married one day and be fired the next day for getting married,” Chen says. “Polyamorous people live under that shadow every day. They have to decide whether having these relationships, these families, is going to cost them access to the material conditions of their lives or subject them to discrimination.”

The Possibilities with Legal Protection

“What’s remarkable is that research shows polyamorous relationships are not more likely to be shorter or less satisfying than other relationships, despite how much stigma they face,” Chen says. “That’s very similar to how people once argued that same-sex relationships were unstable, when in fact the instability came from discrimination.”

Beaei Pardo believes that her experiences of finding polyamorous love is not unusual. “You find that people who stay in polyamory for the long term have experiences like the one I had,” she says. “Somebody shows us how you do it without hurting other people and it feels amazing to accept yourself like that.”

“There’s a confirmation bias. Forty or 50% of marriages end in divorce, but people don’t say that’s because monogamy doesn’t work. With polyamory, people assume breakups prove the model is flawed,” Chen says.

Diana Adams, executive director of Chosen Family Law Center, a legal organization dedicated to achieving legal and social recognition for queer, polyamorous and other non-nuclear families, sees a future for polyamory slowly unfolding.

“For same-sex couples, it was a progressive city saying, ‘okay, let’s do it.’ And then you have a lesbian couple standing in front of a courthouse with flowers and they share health insurance and a year later, everything’s fine. Society didn’t crumble. The kids are fine. And that’s what can build a movement to be able to pass it at a state level,” Adams says. “This isn’t just about polyamory. It’s about whether our laws encourage care, connection, and stability, or whether they isolate people and make family formation harder for anyone who doesn’t fit a very narrow mold.”

For Andrea, who has been with her partner for 11 years, being poly is essential to her happiness. She recounts how something always felt “off” in monogamous relationships.

“I feel grateful I was able to joyfully embrace being poly, and break out of the roles that society expected of me,” she says. “I was spending my lifetime trying to impress people and be what they expected of me and then suddenly realized, ‘wait, there’s no reward for this. Nobody is going to give me anything better than what I would be getting by just living joyfully and being myself.’”

“If the laws could catch up and help support me in that process, it would make living as myself much easier,” Andrea says. “I think that’s why so many people who are non-monogamous of some variety keep it very strictly behind closed doors.”

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