A polyamorous threesome in Puebla has filed for the right to be married, and the man in the trio, who is the main plaintiff in the case, received a favorable judgement from a local judge.

The attempt to form a “plural family,” or marriage with more than one partner is not legally recognized in Mexico, despite efforts by the LGBTQ+ community to decriminalize this type of living arrangement.

A judge in Puebla’s Eighth District Civil Court ruled in favor of the complainant who filed the suit in protest against articles of Puebla’s civil code, which lay out the state’s legal definitions of marriage and partnership. The plaintiff was awarded an injunction that will allow the marriage to proceed.

The judge ruled that the articles of the civil code were in fact discriminatory because they stated that marriage or partnership could only exist between two people and that they didn’t take into account the possibility of other “sexual orientations like polyamory.”

The judge went on to say that authorities have the obligation to promote, respect, protect, and guarantee human rights in accordance with the principles of universality, interdependence, indivisibility and progressiveness.

“In terms of norms, there exists a kind of indirect discrimination,” the judge said, “which happens when the norms and practices appear neutral, but it turns out that their content or application translates into disproportionate effects on people or groups in different situations because of their sexual orientation, like polyamory, without providing an objective and reasonable justification [for those effects].”

The judge said that he could find no constitutional reason why marriage should only be between two partners.

Contesting the law in these kinds of cases has become more common in the past several years, like the case brought by a lesbian couple in Durango last year who petitioned to officially marry the ex-partner of one of the women, who was also the father of their children, in an attempt to raise their children together as a threesome.

With reports from El Universal