BELLINGHAM, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – Bellingham City Councilmembers voted unanimously to approve an ordinance affirming the rights of LGBTQ+ community members.

Councilmembers held the vote near the end of their regularly scheduled meeting on Monday. The ordinance protects individuals’ access to health care, free speech, education and gender expression.

But Councilmember Michael Lilliquist points out that there are limitations to what the city can and cannot do.

“It won’t, for example, guarantee that everyone gets respectful healthcare because we don’t reach in and can’t regulate those sorts of relationships,” Lilliquist said. “It won’t necessarily guarantee there’s no discrimination in the workplace or misnaming in the workplace because we don’t reach into those business relationships. If you read this, every single paragraph in here says: ‘the city employees,’ ‘the city shall.’ We can regulate ourselves.”

Community members worked with the City Council to create the ordinance in response to a series of policies issued by the Trump administration.

Councilmember Hollie Huthman stated that current federal directives are threatening LGBTQ+ people’s rights.

“This is all happening, i will say, on one hand- it’s huge a waste of time. because it’s a huge waste of time caused by people that are in power and making us address it when this should be something we have moved on past decades ago and not be talking about these issues anymore.”

My Bellingham Now previously reported that the Council passed a resolution on June 9 reaffirming Bellingham’s status as a welcoming city.

With its passage, the new ordinance creates a new chapter of the Bellingham municipal code.