This year saw a record-breaking number of cities earning the highest score
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the educational arm of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, in partnership with The Equality Federation, recently released its 10th annual Municipal Equality Index (MEI), described as “the nation’s only nationwide assessment of LGBTQ+ equality regarding municipal policies, laws, and services.”
This year, a record-breaking 110 cities earned the highest score of 100, which is up from 11 in 2012, the MEI’s inaugural year.
Other highlights include that:
- This year, 181 cities have transgender-inclusive healthcare benefits for municipal employees – up from 179 in 2020, despite more rigorous standards this year, and only five at the start of the MEI.
- The national city score average jumped to an all-time high of 67 points, up from 64 last year and 59 in 2012, marking both the fourth consecutive year of national average increases as well as the highest year-over-year national average growth ever.
- As a marker of the change that ten editions of the MEI have brought, cities rated by the MEI in 2012 averaged 59 points then; in 2021, those cities averaged 85 points.
- 11 cities scored 100 points in the 2012 MEI; ten times that number did so in 2021, the tenth edition.
- Cities around the country saw progress, with every region of the country seeing a higher average score than last year.
- 43 municipalities have anti-conversion therapy ordinances in states with no state-level protections, up from 38 last year.
Your Financial Professional
If you are wondering about how your city scores on the MEI, you can check online at www.hrc.org.
If you are wondering about how being a member of the LGBTQ+ community may affect your money, you can talk to a financial professional.
A financial professional can help you develop a personalized roadmap specifically tailored to your goals so you don’t have to go at it alone.
Source: Hrc.org
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This article was prepared by FMeX.
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