Minneapolis, Minnesota Amends its Anti-discrimination Ordinance

On May 12, 2025, the city of Minneapolis enacted extensive amendments to its existing anti-discrimination ordinance, including expanding definitions relating to protected characteristics and accommodations. The ordinance applies to employers of all sizes within Minneapolis, any employer that hires an employee whose services will be performed even partially from within Minneapolis, and employers that contract with the city. These amendments will become effective August 1, 2025.

Prohibited Discrimination

The ordinance prohibits employers from engaging in discrimination based on race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, familial status, gender identity, disability, age, marital status, and one’s status relating to a public assistance program. The amendments add to these protected classifications, making it unlawful to discriminate in employment based on justice-impacted status, housing status, height and weight, or any combination of protected characteristics. The amendments also clarify that adverse employment decisions based on these new protected classifications are not prohibited when permitted by state or federal law.

Importantly, the new law includes several definitions of new and existing protected characteristics, including the following:

• Familial status: Adds that protected familial status includes those caring for one or more individuals who cannot meet their own requirements for physical health or safety due to their inability to receive, evaluate, or communicate information.
• Height and weight: Clarifies that protected height and weight include both the numerical measures of one’s height and weight and others’ impressions of these traits (e.g., that someone is considered fat, thin, short, or tall).
• Housing status: Having, or not having, a fixed, regular, adequate nighttime residence.
• Justice-impacted status: Having a criminal record or history, including any arrest, charge, conviction, period of incarceration, or probationary status.
• Race: Clarifies that race includes traits historically associated or perceived to be associated with race, including skin color, certain physical features, hair texture, and protective hairstyles.
• Disability: The term has been amended to include having an impairment that is episodic or in remission that would materially limit a major life activity when active.
• Undue hardship: Removes the specific factors to be considered in assessing an undue hardship claim and clarifies that, in relation to reasonable accommodations, an “undue hardship” means a situation requiring significant difficulty or expense depending on a number of factors, determined on a case-by-case basis and specific to the area of discrimination.

Where an employer makes a decision based on an applicant or employee’s height or weight, the ordinance provides that it is an affirmative defense that the individual cannot perform the essential functions of the job due to their height or weight, provided that there is no accommodation the employer could reasonably make that would allow the person to perform the essential functions of the job without imposing an undue hardship on the employer, fundamentally altering the essential nature of the entity's programs or services, or posing a direct threat to the health and/or safety of the individual or others.

Additionally, prior to the amendment, prohibited employment discrimination under the ordinance included discriminatory conduct toward a person or employee with respect to application, hiring, training, apprenticeship, tenure, promotion, upgrading, compensation, layoff, discharge, or any term or condition of employment. This amendment also makes it unlawful to discriminate with respect to a person or employee’s benefits, and clarifies that prohibited discrimination under the law includes any adverse action resulting in whole or in part from an unlawful decision or practice.

Criminal History Discrimination

In a first for the state of Minnesota, the ordinance also provides protection from discrimination for persons charged with or convicted of a crime. The ordinance uses the euphemism “justice impacted status” to refer to persons charged or convicted of crimes, including felons. The ordinance provides that employers may only take adverse action, such as discharge against employees or refusal to hire against applicants, after determining that a criminal conviction’s impact on the ability, capacity, or fitness of the person to perform the duties of the position they are in or for which they are being considered for hire requires the adverse action. In making that assessment, employers must consider whether the person was convicted, the passage of time since the conviction, the nature and gravity of the crime, the person’s age at the time of the offense, any rehabilitation that has taken place, and the risk to the property or safety of those working around the person. The ordinance also provides that an arrest alone, without a subsequent conviction, is not enough to take action against the person. However, employers are entitled to examine the facts surrounding a charge without a conviction, using the factors listed above, and make a determination based on those facts for possible adverse action. 

For many employers with employees working or residing in Wisconsin, Minneapolis’s prohibition on justice-impacted status will be familiar. Like the Minneapolis ordinance, the state of Wisconsin prohibits discrimination against employees and applicants based on certain criminal charges and convictions. 

Finally, it is important to keep in mind the reach of the Minneapolis ordinance. As with the ordinance’s other proscriptions against discrimination, the ordinance proscribes justice-impacted status discrimination “Occurring within the City of Minneapolis.” It is therefore good practice for employers considering whether to take action against an employee or applicant outside of Minneapolis to have that decision made outside of Minneapolis, rather than in Minneapolis. 

Disability, Pregnancy, and Religious Accommodations

Prior to the amended ordinance, Minneapolis employers with 15 or more employees were required to make reasonable accommodations for qualified employees and applicants with disabilities. The amended law requires accommodations to be made for disabilities as well as “known pregnancy-related limitations,” defined as any condition related to, affected by, or arising from pregnancy or a related condition, whether or not the condition meets the statutory definition of a disability.

The amended law clarifies that it is unlawful for an employer to deny employment opportunities, require the use of leave, or to take adverse action against an employee because of their known pregnancy-related limitations or because they requested an accommodation.

While the previous version of the law required employers to make reasonable accommodations for qualified employees, the amendments specify that employers must engage in an interactive process with these employees to determine appropriate accommodations. Importantly, the amendments also require employers to accommodate employees whose disability makes them unable to perform an essential function of their job if this inability is for a temporary period. 

Lastly, the amended ordinance states that it is an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail to provide a religious accommodation, unless they can demonstrate that doing so would constitute an undue hardship. The law defines a “religious accommodation” as steps that must be taken to accommodate an employee’s known sincerely held religious beliefs or practices.

Enforcement

The amendments provide that they apply to any complaint or charge of employment discrimination filed on or after August 1, 2025. The provisions of the ordinance that were in effect prior to these amendments will continue to apply to charges or complaints filed prior to August 1, except where provisions have been superseded through a subsequent amendment.

In advance of the law’s effective date, employers should revise their employee handbooks, anti-discrimination policies, and procedures for workplace accommodations to ensure that the law’s amended requirements are included. Additionally, employers should ensure that their hiring practices are updated to reflect the law’s enhanced protections for applicants with criminal histories.