Marianne LaBarge City Councilor | Ward 6 | Northampton, MA

WARD 6

         CITY COUNCILOR

MARIANNE LABARGE
Text Box: City of Northampton Obtains a Perfect Score on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2022 Municipal Equality Index for the Fifth Year in Row   NORTHAMPTON - Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra joins the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) to announce that the City of Northampton has scored a perfect score (100) on the 2022 Municipal Equality Index (MEI). The MEI is the nation’s premier benchmarking tool designed to inform municipal officials, policymakers, and business leaders on how well cities across the nation embody LGBTQA+ inclusion in its laws, policies, and services. It has been published every year since 2012.   Since 2018, the MEI has evolved dramatically by instituting new benchmarks ensuring equal access to single-user facilities in public spaces, requiring trans-inclusive health benefits, as well as protecting LGBTQA+ youth from bullying in city services and from dangerous so-called “conversion therapy. However, even with these more stringent MEI requirements, Northampton has joined with other Massachusetts communities like Provincetown, Arlington, Cambridge, Boston, Worcester, and Salem, to receive a perfect score. Northampton is the only community in western Massachusetts that received this important distinction.    “The City of Northampton and the Mayor’s office have worked hard to institute the changes necessary to raise its MEI from 89 in 2017 to attain a perfect score for the past five years,” said Court Cline, Mayor Sciarra’s Executive Liaison to the LGBTQA+ Community.   Since the MEI’s debut in 2012, the number of cities earning perfect scores has increased more than sevenfold, with more than 110 scoring a perfect score in 2022. Today, at least 25 million people live in cities with more comprehensive, transgender-inclusive non-discrimination laws than their state. The City of Northampton is honored to be considered part of this number.   The MEI rated 506 cities, including the 50 state capitals, the 200 largest cities in the United States, the five largest cities or municipalities in each state, the cities home to the state’s two largest public universities, 75 municipalities that have high proportions of same-sex couples and 98 cities selected by the HRC and Equality Federation state group members and supporters. It assesses each city on 49 criteria covering citywide nondiscrimination protections, policies for municipal employees, city services, law enforcement, and city leadership’s relationship with the LGBTQA+ community.    Northampton’s scorecard is attached, and the full report, including detailed scorecards for every city, as well as a searchable database, is available online at www.hrc.org/mei. For more information, contact the Mayor’s Office at 413-587-1249 or mayor@northamptonma.gov.      #                                                                                                                                                                           #                                                                                                                                                                                  # -- Office of Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra City of Northampton 210 Main Street, Room 12 Northampton MA 01060 413-587-1249 phone 413-587-1275 fax www.northamptonma.gov