Fort Mitchell City Council Votes Unanimously for LGBTQ Fairness Ordinance

23rd KY Municipality to Approve Fairness, 3rd in Kenton County

(FORT MITCHELL, Ky - July 19, 2021.) Just a month after Augusta approved Kentucky's twenty-second Fairness Ordinance, the Fort Mitchell City Council voted unanimously tonight to ban discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations against LGBTQ people. The city, population 8,257, joins two other Kenton County communities with local protections, Covington, one of the first Kentucky cities with Fairness in 2003, and Crescent Springs, which approved their ordinance earlier this year.

The twenty-three Kentucky municipalities that have approved local Fairness Ordinances include: Louisville (1999), Lexington (1999), Covington (2003), Vicco (2013), Frankfort (2013), Morehead (2013), Danville (2014), Midway (2015), Paducah (2018), Maysville (2018), Henderson (2019), Dayton (2019), Georgetown (2019), Versailles (2019), Bellevue (2019), Highland Heights (2019), Fort Thomas (2020), Woodford County (2020), Cold Spring (2020), Newport (2020), Crescent Springs (2021), Augusta (2021). and Fort Mitchell (2021).

Two additional Kentucky cities have partial Fairness Ordinances that extend some LGBTQ discrimination protections, Ashland (housing protections) and Cynthiana (housing and public accommodations protections).

Two Statewide Fairness Laws, which would expand similar protections across the Commonwealth, have been pre-filed for the 2022 Kentucky General Assembly along with the HEROES Act, which would restore state veterans benefits to some LGBTQ service members. The U.S. Senate is currently considering the national Equality Act, which passed the House of Representatives, and would also extend similar LGBTQ discrimination protections across the country.

Founded in 1991, the Fairness Campaign is Kentucky's broad-based community effort dedicated to equal rights for lesbian gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Its primary goal is comprehensive civil rights legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and to dismantle systemic racism.