All US states given LGBTQ+ safety ratings – and the worst ones won’t surprise you

A new report has given every US state an LGBTQ+ safety rating – and the ones which received an F score will come as no surprise.

SafeHome’s third annual LGBTQ+ State Safety Report Cards grade all 50 states and Washington DC, based on how safe they are for the queer people, with a scoring system which relies on legislative analysis and FBI hate-crime data.

The report comes after a year when hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills were tabled in states across the US. The legislation has sought – successfully in a number of cases – to roll back access to gender-affirming care, bar trans people from sports and single-sex spaces, stifle free speech, outlaw drag shows and reverse anti-discrimination protections.

After collating the results, SafeHome found nearly 50 per cent of states passed new anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in 2023.

The research awarded Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Delaware A+ grades because they have “comprehensive pro-equality laws and low rates of hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people”.

On the other end of the scale, however, South Dakota, Florida and Wyoming were graded an F because of the “high number of discriminatory laws and hate-crime reporting rates”.

The researchers particularly noted that Florida’s ranking had changed considerably on the previous year, when it had the 15th-lowest safety score.

Rhode Island was awarded overall top spot by SafeHome’s metrics, earning full marks out of 100, for its “numerous laws protecting LGBTQ+ rights and its low incidence of hate crimes”.

The report says: “It was notably one of only six states where every law-enforcement agency reported crime data. [It] has some of the most comprehensive laws in the country regarding LGBTQ+ health, safety and family planning.”

Legislation in the Ocean State includes foster-care non-discrimination laws and mandatory reporting of hate-crime statistics as well as offering gender-affirming care in state Medicaid programmes.

Somehow managing to be worse than even Ron DeSantis’ Florida, South Dakota was given a score of just 46.8 because it is “more prone to anti-equality than pro-equality” and has a relatively high hate-crime rate.

“The few protections South Dakota offers to LGBTQ+ folks include non-discrimination laws regarding admission to colleges and universities, anti-cyberbullying protections and laws prohibiting discrimination in surrogate parenting,” the report reads.

But, unlike states which scored higher, anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the Mount Rushmore State “far outweigh their equality-protecting counterparts”, such as legislation which restricts trans people from using gendered public facilities that match their identity, bans on gender-affirming care for trans youth, and laws permitting discrimination in adoption and foster placement, the researchers said.