Executive Summary
As of February 2016, twenty-one states and the District of Columbia expressly prohibited discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation. Seventeen of those states and the District of Columbia also expressly prohibited discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of gender identity. This report measures how frequently these laws are used by LGBT people, compared to how frequently race non-discrimination laws are used by people of color, and sex non-discrimination laws are used by women.
An aggregation of all available state-level data shows that sexual orientation and gender identity public accommodations non-discrimination laws are used by LGBT people at rates similar to the use of race non-discrimination laws by people of color, and the use of sex non-discrimination laws by women. Nationally, on average, approximately 4 complaints of sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in public accommodations are filed for every 100,000 LGBT adults each year, compared to approximately 3 complaints of race discrimination filed for every 100,000 adults of color, and 1 complaint of sex discrimination filed for every 100,000 women.
The findings refute the argument that discrimination against LGBT people does not occur often enough to establish a need for protective laws. Additionally, even with similar filing rates, sexual orientation and gender identity complaints will not overwhelm government agencies because the raw number of such complaints filed is low. Each year, on average, 93 complaints of sexual orientation or gender identity public accommodations discrimination were filed nationally, across all 16 states that provided data.
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