Fair Assessment Respects Legal Differences The Municipal Equality Index is carefully designed to rate cities in detail while respecting that a number of factors may boost or inhibit a city’s ability or incentives to adopt the laws and policies this project rates. Given the range of authority and incentives that cities have, and acknowledging that our effort to rate small cities as well as large cities exacerbates these challenges, the Mei had to wrestle with three major questions in its initial design.
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How could the MEI fairly take state law into account, particularly as the disparity between states with pro-equality laws and states without pro-equality laws continues to grow?
What do MEI scores say about the atmosphere for LGBT people living and working in a particular place?
ANsweR The answer is balance. The rating system would not be fair if cities were not able to score a 100 on the MEI without being in a state that had favorable state law. Allocating the points carefully to respect the dynamic relationship between state and local government was a must, and we concentrated on what the state law meant for the city being rated.
questioN 2 How could the MEI assess a list of cities as diverse as those selected while acknowledging that the smaller places rated may understandably have less capacity to engage on LGBT issues?
ANsweR We addressed concerns about a small city’s capacity to affect change by building flexibility into the scorecard through the use of bonus points and by providing multiple avenues toward earning points.
ANsweR Even the most thoughtful survey of laws and policies cannot objectively assess the efficacy of enforcement and it certainly cannot encapsulate the lived experience of discrimination that many LGBT people—even those living in 100-point cities—face every day. Therefore, it is important to emphasize that the MEI is an evaluation of municipal laws and policies. It is not a rating of the best places for LGBT people to live, nor is it an evaluation of the adequacy or effectiveness of enforcement. It is not an encapsulation of what it feels like to be an LGBT person walking down the street. While some LGBT people may prefer to live in cities that respect and include them, there are undoubtedly many other factors that make a place a welcoming, inclusive place to live.
To be clear, the MEI specifically rates cities on their laws and policies while respecting the legal and political context the city operates within. It is not a measure of an LGBT person’s lived experience in that city.
The MEI specifically rates cities on their laws and policies while respecting the legal and political context the city operates within. hrc.org/mei
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How it woRks
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