Although no law can truly prevent unfair treatment, nondiscrimination laws act as a deterrent and offer a path to accountability when problems arise. But many state statutes do not explicitly protect LGBTQ+ people — and without federal nondiscrimination laws pertaining to the queer community, most LGBTQ+ people in the United States are left vulnerable.
In 2025, approximately half of LGBTQ+ people in the United States live in areas where they can still be denied housing, credit and equal access to public accommodations. LGBTQ+ people in many parts of the U.S. can still be denied jobs, health care, education and more because of their LGBTQ+ identities or self-expression.
Under the Trump administration, queer people — especially trans community members and people of color — are under attack as they face not just barriers to access or a lack of protections but more formal and overt restrictions to their rights. Amidst these struggles, there’s something to learn from those who came before us and the significant anti-discrimination advances they made during other hostile times in history.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids unfair treatment in employment, education, public accommodations and some other aspects of life based on a person’s race, skin color, religion, sex or national origin. But those are the only protected classes named in the law, which means that experiences of mistreatment based on LGBTQ+ identity or expression are up for debate and interpretation.
A 2020 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court found that firing an employee based on sexual orientation or gender identity is sex-based discrimination.
But employment discrimination is only prohibited when a private employer has 15 or more employees — and a strong majority of American businesses do not meet that threshold. Approximately 80% have just 10 or fewer employees, and about half of those small businesses have just just one to four workers.
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Additionally, the ruling could be overturned in the future — potentially excluding LGBTQ+ people from these employment protections.
Various LGBTQ+ rights — including marriage equality — are suddenly at risk for similar reasons. These rights are only upheld by court rulings, which may or may not continue to stand over time.
Workplace discrimination poses a significant threat to economic stability — making it an important first stop in the battle toward equal rights. Many of the first local ordinances banned discriminatory hiring practices or at-will firing based on sexual orientation.
San Francisco and East Lansing, Michigan were the first municipalities to establish ordinances prohibiting discrimination against gay and lesbian people in city employment in 1972.
Over 50 years later, less than half of states have nondiscrimination statutes that specifically mention any LGBTQ+ people at all, and those that do often aren’t as comprehensive as they need to be. They leave out some members of the queer community or don’t apply to many crucial aspects of life.
Trans and gender nonconforming people weren’t formally recognized within a nondiscrimination statute until 1975 when Minneapolis, Minnesota became the first city in the United States to ban discrimination on the basis of “having or projecting a self-image not associated with one’s biological maleness or one’s biological femaleness.”
The law was part of a slew of progressive pieces of legislation passed by outgoing leaders before a more conservative mayor took over. Not only was this law the first to explicitly recognize gender diversity, the Minneapolis ordinance specifically protected access to more than just employment — prohibiting discrimination in labor union membership, property ownership, property rental, enrollment in schools and use of public services and accommodations.
As local laws evolved, some added explicit protections pertaining to local topics du jour or addressed areas of life that were observed as hardships. Efforts to implement or expand local nondiscrimination laws turned into a movement as options at the state and federal level stalled, leading to approximately 400 municipalities passing statutes that prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in employment, housing and public accommodations by 2025.
While that’s a success worth celebrating, it means more than 19,000 municipalities across the country may not have any nondiscrimination protections that support the queer community.
Some leaders may feel that state guidelines are robust. For example, New Jersey — which first banned discrimination based on sexual orientation in 1991 — added gender identity and expression in 2006. The state bans discrimination by all employers — even in businesses that only have one employee. Many of the state’s municipalities haven’t yet established nondiscrimination ordinances — likely because people tend to feel protected by state statutes.
But not all states have such strict standards.
The number of LGBTQ+ inclusive municipal ordinances continues to grow — with efforts in various states, including Kansas, which does not have a statewide ban on LGBTQ+ discrimination but has the highest percentage of its LGBTQ+ population covered by these kinds of local ordinances instead. Approximately half of the state’s queer community is protected by local laws.
Activists are also expanding definitions of protected classes to include more members of the queer community as they write these laws. One recent example in Pennsylvania extends protections to people living with HIV, nonbinary people, intersex people, survivors of domestic abuse, people living with long COVID and more.
And those local laws can serve as templates for statewide statutes — including updates in states that are already attempting to be inclusive.
It took ten years following the first municipal nondiscrimination laws for any state to enact similar statutes protecting LGBTQ+ people. Wisconsin was the first — passing a law affording gays and lesbians nondiscriminatory access to housing and employment in 1982, a year before queer sex was actually decriminalized by the state.
The language of the bill was significantly influenced by a local ordinance passed by leaders in Madison, Wisconsin in 1975. Former state legislator David Clarenbach — who didn’t necessarily hide that he was gay while serving in public office — was a big part of these efforts alongside his former partner, Jim Yeadon — who was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office when he joined the Madison Common Council two years later.
Throughout the 1970s, Yeadon was considered an expert in municipal nondiscrimination ordinances. In 1978, Yeadon helped Madison avoid a repeal of the city’s ordinance.
Clarenbach said religious leaders were also part of the movement to change the state law, partnering not with the intention to promote queer identity from any moral lens but instead to denounce discrimination.
“We didn’t ask the Catholic church, for instance, whether homosexuality was good or bad or to be encouraged or discouraged or sinful or not sinful,” Clarenbach said during an interview for the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project. “We asked if bigotry and discrimination could be tolerated against any group in our society. And when that’s the question, the answer is an overwhelming no, it cannot be tolerated.”
Wisconsin’s state law continues to lack mention of gender identity and other LGBTQ+ people in its language, which Clarenbach has said is inexcusable.
“For anyone to fail to make that part of their agenda, even for people who don’t know anyone who’s trans, is an ethical and moral shame,” Clarenbach said. “Shame on any politician today who doesn’t recognize that reproductive rights and trans rights are part and parcel of the movement of civil rights, and that should be the mantra of our society today.”
The city of Madison has adopted amendments and additional laws to broaden the scope of its original ordinance. For example, discrimination on the basis of gender identity is now banned.
These kinds of laws aren’t just for show. They’re offering tangible guidance to many LGBTQ+ people who seek justice and accountability when they believe they’ve been wronged.
For example, trans athletes should be safeguarded by state and local nondiscrimination laws in locations that have these protections, and some athletes who have faced hardships are leaning on these laws as the basis of lawsuits, intending to prove that they deserve access.
Although the Supreme Court ruled that sex-based discrimination applies to LGBTQ+ people in employment, there is no Supreme Court ruling definitively mandating that Title IX — which safeguards students from sex-based discrimination — applies to the queer community. It’s possible that we’ll hear from the Supreme Court about this in the future, but for now, local ordinances and state laws supersede those executive orders and threats.
The Equality Act, a federal bill first proposed in 1974, has been updated multiple times since it first failed to pass decades ago. Today’s version was passed by Congress with bipartisan support in 2019, but the legislation continues to die every time it hits the Senate.
The bill hopes to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or sex characteristics in employment, housing, public accommodations, federally-funding programs, education, credit and jury service. It also seeks to clarify sex-based discrimination by explicitly stating that stereotyping and other conditions can constitute as discrimination.
The principles explored in the Civil Rights Act have been expanded before. For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) added disabled people to the list of protected classes and broadened anti-discrimination principles by mandating that certain aspects of accessibility be built into public life and workplaces.
Although these hopes for federal protections may one day turn into a reality, history shows us that there’s a long road ahead. In the meantime, taking action closer to home may have the biggest impact on people’s everyday lives.
Those with state guardrails might not understand the importance of doubling down by implementing local ordinances or filling in the gaps for aspects of state laws that aren’t as robust.
But any ordinance protecting even just one right is a buffer to safeguard LGBTQ+ people from being treated differently than their peers, an added cushion during an uncertain time in history when the federal government is not only failing to address the needs of LGBTQ+ people but is actively working to harm them.
“It is a matter of life and death,” Clarenbach said. “Not just oral and civil rights, but it’s a matter of living and breathing.”
