2026 LGBTQ+ State Safety Report Cards

LGBTQ+ Safety Grades by State

This year's analysis yielded safety scores ranging from 44.7 (F) to 95.8 (A+). We also translated those results to letter grades, as represented on the map below.

2026 LGBTQ+ State Safety Rankings

As a constitutional republic granting broad authority to the states, America's legislative climate often reflects regional attitudes. Federal laws still protect the right to same-sex marriage and forbid employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. However, other LGBTQ+ legal protections rely on state and local laws.

The level of LGBTQ+ acceptance and assimilation ranges widely across America. The map and table above show the diverse safety scores the 50 states and the District of Columbia earned. In some places, the gay and trans communities enjoy inclusion and celebration, while in others, they face exclusion and persecution.

The perceived safety of one's environment can significantly impact mental health, quality of life, and decisions on where to live. Though a majority of LGBTQ+ Americans believe their state's safety record exceeds most others, 28 percent have considered the costly decision of moving across state lines in search of better legal protections. Now, let's explore the leading states.

The Safest States for LGBTQ+ Americans

The top of our rankings tells a clear story: the safest states have built robust legal protections across the board and maintained low rates of anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes. Every state in our top five scored strongly in the law categories our respondents found most critical (non-discrimination protections, health and safety laws, and criminal justice reforms), while carrying virtually no anti-equality legislation.

1. Nevada | Safety Grade: A+ (95.8)

The Silver State claims the top spot in our 2026 rankings and earns our only A+ grade. Nevada wasn't always a leader on LGBTQ+ rights. For instance, it held onto its sodomy law until 1993, later than many progressive states but a full decade ahead of the federal ruling in Lawrence v. Texas. However, a population boom and evolving political landscape have transformed it into a national leader on LGBTQ+ rights. In 2022, voters amended the state constitution itself to enshrine protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression, making Nevada one of a handful of states with constitutional-level safeguards.

What stands out about Nevada is its consistency. It scores high across every pro-equality category (non-discrimination, parenting, criminal justice, youth protections) and has virtually no anti-equality laws. Pair that legislative strength with a relatively low hate crime rate and strong law enforcement reporting (93 percent of agencies submit data to the FBI), and you get a state with remarkable safety standards for LGBTQ+ residents.

In 2025, there were a few notable legislative changes in the state. First, the state recognized Las Vegas' historic “Fruit Loop” district as an official landmark for its cultural importance as an LGBTQ+ community sanctuary. Meanwhile, AB240, a bill that would have restricted transgender athletes in school sports, died in committee, a sign that the legislature continues to resist the wave of anti-trans legislation sweeping other states.

2. Illinois | Safety Grade: A (94.9)

Illinois pairs a long progressive history with the country's largest portfolio of pro-equality laws. The Prairie State was an unlikely pioneer: it became the first state to decriminalize homosexuality back in 1962, more than a decade before most of the country. Today, that early lead has compounded into the most comprehensive legal framework for LGBTQ+ people of any state, spanning non-discrimination, parenting, youth, criminal justice, and health protections.

We did find one notable difference between Illinois and the other safest states: Illinois has more religious refusal provisions than any other A-graded state. Its anti-LGBTQ+ hate crime ranking (22nd safest) also sits in the middle of the pack (22nd out of 51), though that's kept in check by strong reporting participation among law enforcement agencies. Still, the sheer breadth of its protections, particularly in the categories our respondents rated most important, overwhelms those drawbacks.

Illinois continued building on its foundation of equality in 2025. The Equality for Every Family Act, signed in December, modernized parentage laws to better protect LGBTQ+ families and nontraditional parents. In March of 2025, the state updated its enforcement guidance to protect transgender and nonbinary people under the Illinois Human Rights Act. On the other hand, multiple anti-LGBTQ+ bills, including sports bans and bathroom restrictions like HB1204, were introduced in the Illinois legislature but have since stalled.

3. Hawaii | Safety Grade: A (94.7)

Hawaii may not have the most extensive legal protections on our list (its law score lands in the middle of the A-graded states). Still, the Aloha State makes up for it with something no legislature can manufacture: an exceptionally low rate of anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes. We found that Hawaii is the fourth safest state in terms of hate crime frequency and reporting, and that safety component is what pushed it into the top three.

The state's culture of inclusivity runs deeper than statute. Hawaii has no history of criminalizing same-sex relationships, and its tradition of “mahu,” a recognized third-gender identity in Native Hawaiian culture, predates Western contact by centuries. Modern protections build on that foundation: Hawaii maintains solid pro-equality laws across parenting, criminal justice, and non-discrimination.

In 2025, Act 298/SB1231 modernized parentage laws and strengthened protections for LGBTQ+ families. The state also continued expanding inclusion through its LGBTQ+ Commission. No major anti-LGBTQ+ bills advanced during the state’s 2025 legislative session, though several were introduced and failed.

4. Colorado | Safety Grade: A (94.5)

By the numbers alone, the Centennial State has the strongest legal framework for LGBTQ+ people in the nation. Colorado scores at or near the maximum in every pro-equality category (parenting, criminal justice, non-discrimination, youth, and health) with a total pro-equality law count that trails only Illinois. It carries just a sliver of anti-equality legislation, though, as Colorado retains HIV-related sentence enhancements for certain criminal offenses.

The state continued strengthening protections for LGBTQ+ people in 2025. HB25-1312, the Kelly Loving Act, bolstered anti-discrimination safeguards for transgender people and simplified gender-marker changes on identification. HB25-1309 codified access to gender-affirming healthcare. Several anti-trans proposals were introduced but failed to advance in the Democratic-controlled legislature.

So why isn't Colorado #1? Its hate crime rate. Ranking 26th out of 51 in safety, Colorado's relatively higher incidence of anti-LGBTQ+ crime pulled its composite score just below states with similar laws. It's a useful reminder that even the most protective legal environments can't fully prevent hostility, a point we'll explore further in the list of unsafest states.

5. Maine | Safety Grade: A (94.4)

Maine's story in 2025 was defined less by what laws it passed than by what laws were stopped. The Pine Tree State already had one of the nation's strongest legal frameworks, scoring high across all pro-equality categories with a perfect zero in anti-equality laws, and lawmakers spent the year defending it. According to the ACLU and Translegislation.com, Mainers defeated a slate of anti-LGBTQ+ bills: a trans sports ban (LD 233), bathroom restrictions (LD 868 and LD 1704), a bill forcing schools to use birth-certificate names and pronouns (LD 1002), an attempt to strip gender identity from the Maine Human Rights Act entirely (LD 1432), and restrictions on gender-affirming care (LD 380).

Maine is one of only a handful of states in the country that scores zero across every anti-equality category: no religious refusal laws, no anti-youth laws, no restrictions on healthcare access. That clean record, combined with strong protections and a moderate hate crime profile, keeps it firmly in the top five.

Honorable Mentions

Outside the top five, New York, Minnesota, California, Michigan, and New Jersey also earned “A” grades, each combining strong legal protections with manageable hate crime rates. New York and California both rank among the top four states nationally for their laws, with sweeping protections across every category. Minnesota stands out for having no anti-equality legislation on the books. And Michigan, which has rapidly expanded its LGBTQ+ protections in recent years, benefited from a strong safety score that complemented its growing legal framework.

The Worst States for LGBTQ+ Safety

The states at the bottom of our rankings face a shared challenge: few pro-equality protections in the categories that matter most to LGBTQ+ Americans, combined with a significant accumulation of restrictive laws. Where the top states score near-perfect marks across the board, these states often have gaps in multiple pro-equality categories while carrying penalties in religious refusal, youth restrictions, and limits on non-discrimination protections.

51. West Virginia | Safety Grade: F (44.7)

West Virginia lands in last place in our 2026 rankings, and it's one of the few states that scored poorly on both halves of our composite score. The Mountain State ranks 35th out of 51 for its laws and 50th for hate crime safety, a combination no other state matches. Compounding the issue, only 44 percent of West Virginia's law enforcement agencies report hate crime data to the FBI, the lowest participation rate in the country. This further penalizes its safety score.

On the legal side, we found that West Virginia has no non-discrimination protections and no criminal justice protections for LGBTQ+ people. West Virginia has no non-discrimination protections and no criminal justice protections for LGBTQ+ people, gaps in the two categories our respondents rated most important. On the restrictive side, it has legislation limiting transgender youth participation in sports and other school-related policies, along with provisions related to religious refusal rights and health and safety.

In March 2025, the state enacted the “Riley Gaines Act,” which defines sex strictly as either “male” or “female”, legally allowing for single-sex spaces such as locker rooms and prisons. Lawmakers also advanced legislation (SB 154) requiring school staff to disclose a student's transgender identity to parents.

50. Washington, D.C. | Safety Grade: F (50.8)

D.C. is the most striking case in our entire ranking, and an important reminder that good laws alone don't guarantee safety. The District's legal framework is among the best in the nation: it ranks 10th for its laws, with strong protections across non-discrimination, criminal justice, health and safety, and youth categories, and it carries zero anti-equality legislation. Based solely on the laws, D.C. would earn an A.

But D.C. has the highest rate of anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes in the nation (more than 6 incidents per 100,000 people), and that overwhelmed its legislative strength in our composite scoring. The District was included in GLAAD's 2025 tracking of more than 1,000 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents nationwide, including assaults, harassment, vandalism, and threats.

D.C.'s grade highlights something we think is worth emphasizing: laws create a framework for equality, but they can't erase the hostility that LGBTQ+ people encounter in daily life. No state or district illustrates that gap more clearly.

49. Louisiana | Safety Grade: F (51.4)

Despite New Orleans' famously welcoming culture and vibrant LGBTQ+ community, the statewide picture in Louisiana tells a different story. The Pelican State has almost no pro-equality legal protections: it had zero non-discrimination laws, the category our respondents rated most critical, and nearly zero laws related to criminal justice, youth, and health protections. On the other side, it carries anti-equality legislation in five of six categories.

Only nine hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people were reported in the most recent 12-month period, a figure that may say more about underreporting than actual safety, given the state’s limited law enforcement participation in federal data collection.

Louisiana attempted to implement and expand restrictions targeting LGBTQ residents in 2025, passing a new religious exemption law. The state legislature also attempted to prohibit certain diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, but the effort failed.

48. Arkansas | Safety Grade: F (56.7)

The Natural State carries the second-heaviest anti-equality legal burden in the country, trailing only Tennessee. We tallied 18.5 points of restrictive legislation in Arkansas, anchored by its religious refusal laws (tied with Mississippi for the nation's highest) and a substantial set of anti-trans youth provisions. On the protective side, the state has no non-discrimination laws and no criminal justice protections, gaps in the two categories that LGBTQ+ Americans told us matter most.

Arkansas's hate crime ranking (23rd-best out of 51) is moderate, which kept it from falling to the very bottom of the composite. That said, only 79 percent of the state's law enforcement agencies report hate crime data, and civil rights organizations have documented significant harassment tied to libraries, drag events, and LGBTQ+-inclusive institutions.

In 2025, lawmakers passed legislation expanding religious-freedom-based exemptions, including HB1615, which drew opposition from civil rights groups, warning it could broaden the scope of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.

47. Tennessee | Safety Grade: F (56.9)

Tennessee has the most anti-equality legislation of any state in the country, a total of 20 points spread across criminal justice, non-discrimination rollbacks, religious refusal, youth restrictions, and health and safety barriers. At the same time, it has no non-discrimination protections and no health and safety protections, gaps in two of the three most heavily weighted categories in our scoring.

The Volunteer State's hate crime ranking (19th safest) is the main reason it doesn't rank even lower. Without that moderating factor, its laws alone would place it at the very bottom by a wide margin.

The 2025 legislative session added several new restrictions. SB0937 explicitly protects teachers and school employees who refuse to use a student's preferred pronoun when it doesn't match their biological sex, shielding staff from both civil liability and adverse employment action for doing so. HB0064 mandated that multi-occupancy restrooms, changing areas, and showers in public schools be segregated by biological sex.

Several bills introduced in 2025 have since been enacted in 2026, extending the legislative push into the current year. HB1271 requires all state and local government entities to revise existing policies so that any reference to sex or gender is defined strictly by reproductive anatomy and genetics at birth, with a compliance deadline of January 1, 2027. SB0468, the “Women's Safety and Protection Act,” which legislators sent to the governor on May 11, 2026, codifies definitions of “female” and “male” across state law and requires those definitions to govern any law or agency rule where an individual's sex is relevant. Most recently, HB0754 bars counties and municipalities from prohibiting controversial conversion therapy for minors and requires gender clinics receiving state funds to offer detransition procedures, and mandates detailed monthly reporting on all gender transition procedures to the state health department.

How Safe Do LGBTQ+ Americans Feel Today?

Laws and crime statistics are essential, but they only capture part of the picture. The lived experience of LGBTQ+ Americans provides context that no scorecard can fully reflect. Our survey of 1,000 LGBTQ+ adults paints a picture of a community still navigating significant uncertainty and closely watching the federal government.

Nine in ten LGBTQ+ Americans expected harmful federal action in 2025, and nine in ten still do in 2026. That consistency is itself the story: a full year of executive orders and state-level legislative acceleration has done nothing to ease the community's expectations about what's coming from Washington. That expectation puts enormous weight on state governments to fill the gap, but our survey reveals deep skepticism that they will.

Just 33 percent of respondents are very or extremely confident their state will protect them, while 46 percent are only slightly confident or not confident at all. That gap is telling. Even among those who say they're “at least somewhat confident,” nearly two in five qualify that confidence with the word “somewhat”, a hedge that suggests awareness of the limits of state-level protection when federal policy shifts aggressively.

This is the central tension our rankings are designed to illuminate. States with strong A-grade legal frameworks, such as Colorado, Nevada, and Illinois, offer meaningful buffers: non-discrimination laws, healthcare protections, and criminal justice reforms that exist independently of federal policy. But for LGBTQ+ Americans in F-grade states, there is no such buffer. Where state law already restricts rights, federal action compounds rather than counteracts the harm. The 33 percent who say they're not at all confident their state will protect them are, in many cases, correct.

The Places LGBTQ+ People Avoid for Safety

Unfortunately, these fears translate directly into avoidance behavior. When we asked respondents which public spaces they'd avoided due to fear of discrimination or violence, a clear pattern emerged, and it has shifted somewhat over three years.

The most striking finding here is the 2025 spike followed by a 2026 partial retreat. Avoidance of sporting events jumped from 12 to 19 percent between 2023 and 2025, public transportation from 13 to 18 percent, and the share avoiding no public spaces at all dropped from 39 to 29 percent, suggesting 2025 was a year of heightened fear across the board. In 2026, those numbers have pulled back toward 2023 levels in most categories, with the “none of the above” figure returning to 39 percent.

What that rebound doesn't mean is that things are simply back to normal. Religious institutions remain the most avoided space by a wide margin, with 45 percent of LGBTQ+ adults still steering clear, a figure that has barely budged from 2023 despite the overall moderation. And 28 percent of respondents told us they've considered moving to a different state in search of better protections. This number speaks to how permanent and structural, rather than momentary, these concerns feel.

The Federal Picture

Those concerns have several potential sources. On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” directing federal agencies to recognize only biological sexes and to end what the order called “gender ideology” in federal programs. However, opponents of the executive order argued it would undermine the rights of transgender Americans. The same day, Trump rescinded a series of Biden-era executive orders protecting LGBTQ+ people, including the directive requiring federal agencies to implement the Supreme Court's Bostock v. Clayton County ruling, which had extended workplace discrimination protections to LGBTQ+ employees.

Those federal actions may have inspired accelerated legislative activity at the state level. The ACLU tracked more than 600 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in state legislatures in 2025, with 70 becoming law by mid-year. The majority targeted transgender Americans specifically, with new or expanded restrictions on bathroom access, gender-affirming care, sports participation, school curricula, and legal gender recognition. By the end of 2025, 24 states had enacted at least one of those types of restrictive laws.

Everyone deserves to feel safe at home, and laws can help ensure personal security for all members of our communities. Substantial progress has been made across the grand arc of history for LGBTQ+ Americans. However, as our rankings indicate, there is still no consensus across the United States on key questions of equality under the law. For those who have a choice of where to live, these rankings offer a reference point for finding the safest location.

Methodology

The 2026 safety ranking is based on a composite safety score comprising a law score and a hate crime score.

Law Score

We developed a “law score” for each state based on the presence of pro- and anti-equality legislation affecting LGBTQ+ residents. Our methodology involved two key steps: identifying relevant laws and assigning relative weights to them.

We used the Movement Advancement Project's (MAP) comprehensive breakdown of pro- and anti-equality legislation across all U.S. states. The MAP framework categorizes laws into six areas: parenting laws; hate crimes and criminal justice laws; non-discrimination laws; religious refusal and relationship recognition laws; youth laws; and health and safety laws.

To determine how much weight each legislative category should receive in our scoring system, we conducted a survey of 1,004 LGBTQ+ individuals in April 2026. Survey participants were asked to rank the relative importance and potential harm of different types of laws affecting LGBTQ+ people using a MaxDiff (best-worst scaling) methodology. Specifically, respondents evaluated laws that promote equality versus those that undermine it.

Each state's final law score was calculated by:

1. Tallying the number of pro- and anti-equality laws in each of the legislative categories
2. Applying the weights derived from our LGBTQ+ community survey to each category
3. Computing a composite score that reflects both the quantity of relevant legislation and the community-assessed importance of each legal area, and normalizing it to a 100-point scale

The survey results showed the following ranking of law categories by importance:

The laws most important for promoting safety:

1. Non-discrimination laws that forbid discrimination in employment, housing, etc. (weight: 10)
2. Hate crimes and criminal justice laws that require mandatory reporting, eliminate panic defenses, and prevent profiling (weight: 9.2)
3. Health and safety laws that uphold LGBTQ+ healthcare rights and enable gender-marker updates (weight: 9.0)
4. Youth laws that protect LGBTQ+ children through anti-bullying measures, conversion therapy bans, and inclusive education (weight: 8.5)
5. Parenting laws that legally recognize marriages and parenthood across adoption, surrogacy, and fostering (weight: 7.5)

Laws most damaging to safety:

1. Health and safety laws enabling discrimination in healthcare (weight: 10)
2. Criminal justice laws criminalizing HIV/AIDS nondisclosure, consensual activity, etc. (weight: 9.7)
3. Limits on non-discrimination protections (weight: 9.1)
4. Youth laws restricting LGBTQ+ youth rights (weight: 8.8)
5. Parenting laws limiting adoption, fostering, etc. (weight: 7.6)
6. Religious refusal laws permitting denial of services or employment (weight: 7.4)

Hate Crime Score

We also calculated a “hate crime score” based on the incidence of hate crimes against people due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. The FBI Uniform Crime Report's Hate Crime Statistics Collection was used to count relevant incidents in each state, divided by rural and urban areas. Note that the reported incidence of hate crimes versus the actual incidence rate may vary by agency and may not perfectly represent the actual hate crime landscape. Not every law enforcement agency in each state reported hate crime incidents to the FBI, which was reflected in the score.

Incidence rates per 100,000 population were calculated for both rural and urban areas within each state, then weighted against the percent of the state's population in rural versus urban areas based on U.S. Census data. This was normalized to a score out of 100, then multiplied by the percentage of state law enforcement agencies that reported hate crime data to the FBI as a penalty for incomplete reporting.

Composite Score

The final LGBTQ+ safety score for each state is the average of the law and hate crime scores. We assigned letter grades on a curved scale to facilitate understanding of how well each state scored relative to others.