This subject arose because I had been looking for ways to use Microsoft & Google's Family features to manage my kids in a co-parenting arrangement. I have children with my ex that I currently manage. She has other children that she manages.
I quickly learned however that the features are only designed for parents that are still together & that don't have kids outside their relationship.
For example, parents & kids can only be assigned to one family plan. So she, or her partner, can't maintain their own plan while still managing the kids that I share with her.
Now I thought this was poor planning on Microsoft & Google's part to design their products around a traditional family. This might not rise to the levels of discrimination most people are concerned with, but it got me thinking.
For example, if a company learns someone was born out of wedlock if they can refuse to hire them. One of the reasons we have protected classes is to prevent discrimination based on personal characteristics that have been held to be suspect when used as the basis of statutory differentiations. Surprisingly, there are little to no protections when it comes to people born out of wedlock.
Even protections from discrimination by the government for children born out of wedlock is not absolute. While the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution to provide some protection from the government, it has been inconsistent and contains intentional loopholes that allow for the imposition of greater procedural burdens.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt14-S1-8-7-3/ALDE_00000834/
To me this is surprising, considering that individuals cannot control whether their parents were married or stay together, but yet are not protected by the constitution & congress has not made laws to protect individuals in such scenarios. Some states have included limited protections, but those are generally applied to the parents & are specific to things like housing, not when it comes to employment.
Discrimination in hiring happens every day. Be it conscious or subconscious. If there isn't a hard, unavoidable quota no one can force anyone to hire people they don't like. The laws may just forbid them from being this forthright.
Never attribute to malice what you can more appropriately attribute to stupidity. The people who coded this may be young and not even on their first divorce yet. To me, that's what this family plan business falls under. To leap from that to organized discrimination of folks being born out of wedlock seems a tad too conspiratorial from my POV.
This may be a fryable fish. Yet I see much bigger fish elsewhere.
What may also hold back development of functional patchwork family plans is legal hot water. Not every split is amicable. The Googles and Microsofts may simply have decided they don't want to be put in a situation where they need to adjudicate between two warring ex partners whose bitterness is overriding their child rearing responsibilities with petty disputes. And building a system where maybe new partners can gain access - even just by mistake - to their spouse's kids accounts also has very bad PR potential when it turns out the step parent is abusive.
Nevertheless you should let them know about your feedback. Patchwork families are quite common and they can probably do more in that area.
The point of my post was more about protections in general. I was just providing context on what brought me to research the topic more. You provide some helpful feedback, but the current family plan framework actually increases the risks.
I also think it would be ignorant to pretend that the US doesn't have a history of discriminating against "illegitimate" individuals. Many states still have laws referring to such individuals as illegitimates. Conservative states in particular take a very religious stance on the matter.
I live in a very southern state, admittingly in an urban area, and unless you have this info out on the web, no one is asking about it. No employer cares.