Kansas City Council passed an ordinance adding formerly incarcerated people to the city's list of protected classes. The move means that people can't be denied employment, housing, or business for having criminal backgrounds.

Formerly incarcerated people are now a protected class in Kansas City.

Kansas City Council passed an ordinance Thursday outlawing discrimination against people with criminal backgrounds in employment, housing, and business.

Council member Melissa Robinson, who sponsored the measure, called it an important step to confronting the long-term effects of being incarcerated.

"It ensures that we have a greater amount of people in our city that are able to reach their full potential," Robinson said. "And they're not having to deal with unnecessary baggage and based off of things that they did previously."

The measure passed 9-3. Voting in favor of the ordinance were Council members Robinson, Lindsay French, Melissa Patterson Hazley, Crispin Rea, Erin Bunch, Darrell Curls, Ryana Parks-Shaw, Andrea Bough, and Jonathan Duncan.

Council members Kevin O'Neill, Nathan Willett, and Wes Rogers were the dissenting votes.

Kansas City organization MORE2 -- the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity -- brought the idea to Robinson last March.

MORE2 has a task force called "Our Voices," made up of formerly incarcerated people and allies who work on criminal justice issues.

" We had so much experience with people being denied basic accommodations, housing, employment, strictly based on their criminal history," said Rev. Thomas James, MORE2's lead organizer for transformational justice. "We began to brainstorm about what could we do."

MORE2 was instrumental in passing a "ban the box" initiative in 2018, which prohibits Kansas City landlords and employers from asking applicants if they have a criminal history.

But advocates say that doesn't remove all barriers: While formerly incarcerated people do not have to self-report criminal backgrounds, current city law doesn't stop potential landlords or employers from looking into candidates themselves.

" We later realized that it just didn't really go far enough in ensuring that people were receiving a fair shake and a fair shot," James said.

James said much of the language for the protected class ordinance was inspired by a similar measure passed by Atlanta City Council in 2022. Before Thursday's vote, Atlanta was seemingly the only major city in the country where formerly incarcerated people are a protected class.

Wisconsin and Illinois both have partial protections for people with criminal backgrounds, but they're not comprehensive.

Last year, Kansas City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting landlords from rejecting potential renters because they use a housing voucher. The source-of-income discrimination ban protects tenants who use Section 8 housing vouchers and other forms of government assistance.

However, Missouri Republicans have recently signaled that they're considering preempting Kansas City's ordinance, taking away those protections. The legislature already banned municipalities like Kansas City from imposing eviction moratoriums.

James said he isn't worried yet about that possibility.

Instead, he wants to focus on what else can be done in Kansas City. His next goal: automatic record expungements.

" One of our leaders in Our Voices got her record expunged, but whenever she gets a background check, the background check comes back and it'll say 'criminal record expunged,'" James said.

In general, James wants to see a shift in the narrative around formerly incarcerated people.

" One in three adults in the United States has some sort of criminal record," James said. "So surely we don't want to bar one third of our country from participating in what we call the American Dream."