WASHINGTON – The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in partnership with the Equality Federation Institute released it’s seventh annual Municipal Equality Index (MEI) that examines how inclusive municipal laws, policies, and services are of LGBTQ+ individuals who live and work there.

The study examined 506 cities across the nation, including 25 in Texas. Cities are rated based on non-discrimination laws, the municipality as an employer, municipal services, law enforcement and the city leadership's public position on equality.

The average scores for cities in Texas is 41 out of 100 points, which falls below the national average of 60.

“Work on the municipal level is so important and results in a profound and direct impact to the lives of LGBTQ+ people, especially within states like Texas that do not have a statewide non-discrimination ordinance in place,” said Emmett Schelling, Executive Director of the Transgender Education Network of Texas. “HRC’s Municipal Equality Index is a valuable resource that allows us to gauge where municipal level work is needed, it identifies and reflects which cities have made real commitments and changes in order to be fully inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community within their cities.”

In the United States progress is being made in equality, of the 88 cities that scored 100 points, four of them are located in Texas.

• 408 cities currently have equal employment opportunity policies that expressly include sexual orientation and/or gender identity, which is an increase by 30 over the past year.
• 182 municipalities require their contractors to have LGBTQ-inclusive employment nondiscrimination policies, an increase of 19 since last year.
• 164 cities now offer transgender- inclusive health care benefits for city employees, up from 147 last year.
• 118 cities offer equal benefits to the same- or different-sex domestic partners of city employees and their legal dependents.

These are the following scores for the cities surveyed:

For additional information visit hrc.org/mei.