On June 26, 2015, the LGBTQ rights movement reached a major milestone in the pursuit of full equality when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized marriage for same-sex couples nationwide. Despite this progress, more than 200 laws designed to allow discrimination toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people were introduced at the federal, state, and local levels in 2016. The massacre at the Pulse Night Club in Orlando, Florida, last June claimed the lives of nearly 50 people, the majority of whom identified as LGBTQ and people of color, and the number of transgender people murdered in 2016 simply for being themselves, almost all of whom were transgender women of color, was the highest yet recorded.
Violence and discrimination born of intolerance and marginalization continue to take lives and create barriers to equity and opportunity for LGBTQ people and their families, and in 2017 the Trump administration has presented new threats to this community. Members of Trump’s Cabinet and other agency appointees show clear animus against LGBTQ equality and have already taken steps to undermine protections for LGBTQ people, including rescinding the Obama administration’s guidance clarifying the rights of transgender students in schools, hampering efforts to collect data on sexual orientation and gender identity in federal surveys, and promoting a vision of so-called religious liberty that can be misused to discriminate against LGBTQ communities. With the federal government taking a reduced or even hostile role in protecting civil rights, further action can and must happen at the local level. The goal of achieving full legal and lived equality for LGBTQ people and their families can only be met with the support of local leaders who are in a position to make decisions that fully include and protect LGBTQ people.
Mayors, county executives, and other leaders who manage local jurisdictions have the power to take action and make a difference in the lives of LGBTQ people and families. Studies on the diffusion of policy ideas indicate that actions that begin at the local level have the potential to influence peer jurisdictions and can translate to changes at the state and federal levels in a phenomenon called the “snowball effect.”1 Counties and municipalities that pass policies to better serve LGBTQ community members serve as case studies that provide policymakers with opportunities to evaluate and refine the effectiveness of emerging ideas that can be adopted in other jurisdictions.
In 2001, the City and County of San Francisco, under the leadership of its mayor, became the first major jurisdiction to remove exclusions that banned employee access to medically necessary transgender-specific care under employee health care plans.2 Shortly thereafter, executives from across the country began adopting similar policies once questions about the policy were addressed during the implementation process. In 2016, 86 of the 506 cities that were rated in the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index had removed transgender exclusions from employee health care plans.3
Local executives manage governments that implement thousands of federal and state programs, in addition to creating community-based programs that are designed to serve residents at the local level. The programs administered by local jurisdictions are diverse and encompass health, human services, economic security, education, and criminal justice services. The total annual expenditures of all local governments across the United States amounts to $1.72 trillion.4 There are currently more than 3,000 county governments and nearly 36,000 active city and town governments in the United States.5 These county and local government entities employ millions of workers and provide direct services to every resident. Simply put, local governments affect the daily lives of every American in ways both big and small.
Differences in state laws authorizing the establishment of political subdivisions, including cities and counties, have resulted in the creation of numerous governance structures.6 Many localities have governing structures that centralize executive authority in an elected mayor or county executive. Certain localities require multiple elected officials to share and jointly exercise executive authority. Others elect council members who work with a manager who has executive authorities and is appointed to maintain operations beyond any individual elected member’s term.
Like the relationship between the federal government and the states, each state must address similar issues when deciding how—or whether—to share power with their localities. There are two general governing types in terms of how states delegate power: home rule and Dillon’s Rule.7 Home rule states grant broad powers to their municipalities to self-govern, although the exact extent varies by state, issue area, and—in some cases—by municipality.8 In states that utilize Dillon’s Rule, municipalities can only exercise those powers explicitly granted to them.9 To complicate matters, these approaches are not actually mutually exclusive, and many states use a combination of both.10 No state completely prohibits local government authority, and no local government is completely independent of and immune to state authority.11 New York, for example, follows Dillon’s Rule, but New York City is granted certain home rule powers.12
Even with this complicated landscape, mayors, county executives, and other officials have the power to enact policy changes that advance LGBTQ equality. These leaders are often responsible for crafting executive budgets that frame debates around the allocation of resources for services that support the most vulnerable residents. They can issue executive and administrative orders that establish policies affecting programmatic, human resources, and operational functions. Under mayors and county executives, department or bureau directors—who report to executives—negotiate questions on program design and evaluation and often work with nonprofit and private organizational partners to leverage external resources to better address unmet needs in communities. In sum, these leaders and local officials have an array of tools at their disposal that can be used to improve the lives of LGBTQ people and their families.
This report offers a broad menu of options for nonlegislative actions that can be taken by executives managing local governments in order to better protect, serve, and include LGBTQ residents. Given the mandate of local officials, along with their expertise born from close contact with constituents, they have the power to make meaningful change across entire counties and cities down to individual communities. Although it may not be possible to adopt or implement every idea presented in this report in every locality, each can serve as a starting place for deliberating on which actions would be suitable in a particular jurisdiction and spurring new ideas for securing equality and fairness for all.
How to read this report
This report was designed to meet three main goals:
- To provide local executives with a broad range of policy ideas that can be implemented at the county, city, and school district level. Every jurisdiction in the country has a role to play in advancing LGBTQ equality and the aim of this report is to be responsive to the needs of local governments at different levels of development of their own LGBTQ policy agendas.
- To provide concise recommendations for change that allow executives to easily move from idea to action. While it is helpful to read recommendations within the context of other sections of the report, each is drafted to stand alone, making this document easier to search and utilize.
- To show the diversity of administrative actions that have been taken at the local level as well as the diversity of geographies and government actors that have taken these steps. This report features municipalities from all nine U.S. Census regions and 28 states plus the District of Columbia. Even more jurisdictions than those named in this report have taken action to advance the rights of their LGBTQ residents; those included here were chosen to demonstrate the broad range of support for LGBTQ equality across the United States.