Last month, Minneapolis adopted several amendments to the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance substantially expanding the law’s protections, which will apply to Minneapolis employers effective Aug. 1, 2025. These amendments will apply to not only employers with operations located within Minneapolis, but also to any business that employs at least one person performing services within Minneapolis.
A portion of the amendments focused on mirroring state/federal law protections, such as the CROWN Act, which protects people from discrimination based on race-based physical traits (e.g., hair), and incorporates protections from the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which requires employers to provide pregnancy-related workplace accommodations.
The amendments also added new protected categories, including:
While relatively rare, a growing number of jurisdictions throughout the country (such as New York and San Francisco) have adopted similar appearance-based protections against height and weight discrimination for employees. In addition to numerical measurements of a person's height or weight, Minneapolis' ordinance also outlaws bias based on the "impression" an employer has of a person's body size regardless of the numbers. The subjective aspect of the amended ordinance may make compliance with the prohibition against bias...
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