6 Many localities have governing structures that centralize executive authority in an elected mayor or county executive. Simply put, local governments affect the daily lives of every American in ways both big and small.ĭifferences in state laws authorizing the establishment of political subdivisions, including cities and counties, have resulted in the creation of numerous governance structures. 5 These county and local government entities employ millions of workers and provide direct services to every resident. 4 There are currently more than 3,000 county governments and nearly 36,000 active city and town governments in the United States. The total annual expenditures of all local governments across the United States amounts to $1.72 trillion. The programs administered by local jurisdictions are diverse and encompass health, human services, economic security, education, and criminal justice services. 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. 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. 2 Shortly thereafter, executives from across the country began adopting similar policies once questions about the policy were addressed during the implementation process. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Supreme Court legalized marriage for same-sex couples nationwide. On June 26, 2015, the LGBTQ rights movement reached a major milestone in the pursuit of full equality when the U.S.