Record number of cities advance LGBT rights this year

68 get perfect scores from advocacy groups

While a barrage of anti-LGBT bills in state legislatures made headlines in 2017, U.S. cities quietly notched victories in the battle for equal rights.

A record 68 cities earned perfect scores for advancing LGBTinclusive policies and practices this year, according to a report released Thursday by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and the Equality Federation Institute, two LGBT advocacy groups.

The report, which ranks advances at the city level, “demonstrates an encouraging steady trend toward full municipal LGBTQ equality,” said Sarah Warbelow, legal director for HRC.

Progress on transgender equality was singled out by the groups, which have tracked equal rights with a Municipal Equality Index scorecard for six years.

Twenty-five cities revised city employee health care plans in

2017 to cover transgender-related health services. Now, 111 cities nationwide offer such health services, up from 86 in 2016 and just five in 2012.

The report lands in a year that saw activists fending off legislation in statehouses as more than

100 bills they saw as anti-LGBT were introduced in 29 states. The transgender community was targeted with about 39 of those bills: from banning transgender people from using bathrooms that match their gender identity to preventing them from obtaining accurate documents such as driver’s licenses.

Rollbacks at the federal level have left LGBT activists feeling under siege.

In February, the Justice and Education Departments reversed guidance the Obama administration issued that said Title IX protected the rights of transgender students to use facilities that match their gender identity.

President Trump issued a directive this summer to reinstate a ban on transgender people serving in the military.

One of the key findings of the report, the authors say, is that cities continued to press for protections despite those threats. Wheeling, W.Va., and Carlisle, Pa., for example, strengthened protections in private employment, housing and public accommodations. In the South, Birmingham became the first city in Alabama to enact an all-inclusive non-discrimination ordinance.

“Municipalities from every corner of the country — no matter their size or political leaning — continue to strive to realize the fundamental American value that no one should live with the fear of being fired, evicted or excluded from public places simply because of who they are or who they love,” Warbelow said.