One year later: How much impact has Wake County's non-discrimination ordinance had?

It's been one year this month since Wake County's non-discrimination ordinance went into effect.

WRAL News has discovered the ordinance only applied to a handful of discrimination complaints filed in this first year.

Campbell Law School's downtown Raleigh campus is home to the Restorative Justice Clinic where Jon Powell is director.

"We are all about trying to address harm that comes to people," says Powell.

The clinic signed an agreement with Wake County last year to mediate complaints against the county's new non-discrimination ordinance.

"Legality is not the only thing here. There’s a human need that people have, and so we are going to pursue that as much as we think is appropriate if we can help people to come to a resolution," he says.

WRAL News requested copies of the complaints reported to the county.

One man felt a bank discriminated against him "based on the fact that we are a same-sex family."

Another complaint involved a restaurant requiring proof of vaccination, with the person writing “I have a religious objection to the vaccine.”

The 21 complaints filed in the last year reported discrimination based on disability, marital or familial status, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, color and age.

Of those complaints, only 5 qualified under the NDO.

"I think a lot of it is just communication, us building awareness of it and actually being a little bit more explicit about what it does and does not do," explains Danya Perry, director of diversity, equity and inclusion for Wake County.

His office is working to promote those values across the community.

Perry says, despite the small number of complaints that have qualified so far, the NDO is a valuable resource for people who experience discrimination.

"Unfortunately, we have to have guardrails. We need to have tools. We need to have conversations like this to get to a place where this no longer becomes an issue," he says.

The mediation process to resolve discrimination complaints is completely free. The goal is to find some understanding between both sides so they don't end up here in court.

Privacy laws prevent officials from discussing specifics of each case, but Powell tells WRAL News that of those five cases that came to the law school clinic, 3 of the people never responded to follow-up calls.

The other two were resolved without going to mediation.