SLC returns to 100 score in HRC Municipality Equality Index
The Human Rights Campaign launched its 14th annual Municipal Equality Index from the steps of the Salt Lake City County Building alongside Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, City Council Chair Chris Wharton, and City Council Vice Chair Alejandro Puy to highlight the city’s efforts to regain a perfect score in a state that has passed many anti-LBGTQ+ laws in the past two years.
After dipping slightly to 96 points in 2024 because of anti-LGBTQ+ state legislation, the city has returned to the top, maintaining a record of excellence that began with its first 100-point score in 2021.
Cathryn Oakley, senior director of legal policy and the founding author of the MEI, spoke from Salt Lake City at a press conference launching this year’s report.
“The story of this year’s report is really best told with two statistics. First, for the first time in a long time, the average national score fell. The second statistic that’s really important is that we have more 100-point scores than we ever have had before,” Oakley said. “Both of those statistics are important because I think it really speaks to the situation that we find ourselves in, where cities across the country find themselves in, where they are facing increasing pressure to walk away from initiatives that protect many different types of members of a community, including but not limited to LGBTQ people. And there are a lot of pressures on cities around the country to roll back those efforts to make those efforts less visible, to dial back services.”
“While the situation remains very difficult for lots of cities around the country to be able to continue doing the work that is measured and celebrated by the municipal equality index, there are so many wonderful cities like our friends here in Salt Lake who have been doing a truly phenomenal job to continue to find ways to respect, support, appreciate, and serve LGBTQ folks in their community,” she continued.
Erin Mendenhall mentioned that the city was hosting thousands of elected leaders from cities, towns, and villages at the National League of Cities City Summit during this announcement. She also discussed the city’s progress toward equality since she became mayor.
“In 2019, just before I took office as mayor, Salt Lake City received an MEI score of 66. When I became mayor in 2020, I knew that we must do better and that we could do better. So, we’ve been putting in the work,” Mendenhall said. She noted that Weston Clark, Salt Lake City’s director of community outreach, took on the role to help increase the MEI score “with passion and commitment every single year.”
Mendenhall went on to enumerate the progress her office and the city council have made in LGBTQ+ equality over the past five years.
In 2020, the city began covering “gender-affirming, life-saving surgery for our employees and their dependents as part of our benefits package.” They also documented many initiatives that HRC hadn’t included in previous scores.
In 2021, the mayor said, HRC gave Salt Lake City its first perfect 100 score, which it kept for the following two years as well.
“And then in 2024, our city’s score dropped to 96 points due to a change in state law that was related to access to gender-affirming care for minors,” Mendenhall said. “But let me be clear, Salt Lake City is still proud to cover this care and to provide that in our insurance that’s offered to our employees. But getting that care in the state of Utah is more difficult for minors. And we know that that is unacceptable, and we encourage and hope that our legislature will remedy that decision that was made at the state level to reverse that decision.”
“We’ve continued to do everything in our power to make up those four points that we lost, not because of the points, but because it matters to keep doing the work,” Mendenhall continued. “And there is always more work to do. So, we had to get a little bit creative. For example, earlier this year, the state passed a bill that effectively outlawed government buildings from flying any flag except one that, in the state’s words, ‘represents a city, municipality, county, or political subdivision of the state. Salt Lake City looked closely at how we could abide by the law and still represent our city and our people’s values. The result was the adoption of three additional city flags in May of this year. One representing the history of Juneteenth and our Black and African-American residents, one representing our LGBTQIA residents and our loving acceptance of those residents, and another representing our transgender community and our commitment to seeing and celebrating them. On each flag, our iconic sego lily emblem adorns the upper hoist canton, leaving no question that these are indeed city flags and that they represent our shared values of belonging and acceptance.”
“And just last week, right here at city hall on a similarly beautiful day, we celebrated the inaugural raising of the Sego visibility flag at the beginning of Transgender Awareness Week and in anticipation of this Thursday’s Trans Day of Remembrance,” Mendenhall announced. “And that flag’s flying for you today. It flies proudly in front of this building, saying to everyone who sees it, Salt Lake City is here for you. Salt Lake City believes in you. And Salt Lake City loves you. Because in this city, we know that acknowledging and celebrating our diverse communities does not exclude others. In fact, it unifies us.”
Salt Lake City Council Chair Chris Wharton introduced himself as “the chair of a majority queer city council.”
“This recognition serves as a powerful reminder to our LGBTQ neighbors that you belong here. Your city sees, and we want to protect your right to live authentically,” Wharton said. “As a gay man and as an attorney who spent many years working on equality issues and who actually started my work in city government on the Salt Lake City Human Rights Commission when we helped create a report for the council to pass the first anti-discrimination ordinance in housing and employment that included LGBTQ protections in the state of Utah. Later, that became state law, and now it is enshrined in federal law as well.”
“We all know that a score on this equality index is not a finish line,” Wharton continued. “There’ll be future years. There’ll be changing criteria. But this is a reminder that we need to keep growing, that we need to keep listening, and keep protecting the people who call Salt Lake City home. And in a year when so many of our rights have been changed and challenged across the country and in Utah, this work has never mattered more.”
According to HRC, the 132 cities scoring the highest possible marks represent a combined population of roughly 49 million people, and emphasize that this “high-water mark is critical as pressure continues from states that pass laws and policies that seek to shut transgender people — particularly trans youth — out of public life.”
Other areas where the city made progress this year include the adoption of a youth bullying prevention policy and the expansion of city services for LGBTQ+ individuals, including those experiencing homelessness, older adults, members of the transgender community, and people living with HIV/AIDS.
Areas where the Index showed that Salt Lake City could improve include the passage of non-discrimination laws for LGBTQ+ people in public accommodations, additional transgender-inclusive healthcare benefits for city employees, and non-discrimination enforcement powers for the city’s human rights commission.
Other Utah Municipalities
Other Utah cities and towns that the Index tracks include Park City with a score of 83, Ogden at 56, Provo at 54, Logan at 48, West Valley at 44, and West Jordan and Orem both at 34. All of those scores are within a point or two of those reported last year.
“HRC’s Municipal Equality Index demonstrates the ways that many cities can — and do — support the LGBTQ+ people who live and work there, even where states and the federal government have failed to do so,” an HRC statement continued.
