City of Erie Earns Perfect 100 Score on 2022 HRC Municipality Equality Index (MEI)

The City of Erie is proud to announce a perfect score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign's (HRC) 2022 Municipality Equality Index (MEI).  The MEI examines and rates more than 500 municipalities on how inclusive their laws, policies, and services are of LGBTQ+ residents, employees, and visitors.

In May 2018, after the City received a preliminary MEI score of 34/100, Mayor Joe Schember created his LGBTQ+ Advisory Council and tasked the group of LGBTQ+ leaders with achieving a perfect score of 100. The Advisory Council and City of Erie staff used the MEI as a starting point to guide our efforts to celebrate our diversity.  The team set to work on identifying critical areas in which we could make progress on ensuring that our LGBTQ+ residents feel safe, welcome, valued, and included.

Starting in 2018 and with each passing year, the City's score increased as we passed a conversion therapy ban, appointed a police liaison and a mayoral liaison, adopted a non-discrimination in city employment policy, added transgender-inclusive health care benefits, adopted a city contractor non-discrimination policy, drafted a youth bullying prevention policy for the Police Athletic League and all youth summer recreation programs, ensured appropriate FBI hate crime reporting, and demonstrated City leadership's public position and policy efforts on LGBTQ+ equality.

The City expresses its sincere appreciation and thanks to the volunteer Advisory Council members for their hard work and leadership throughout this process. The City remains committed to increasing diversity across all city departments as well as through appointments to authorities, boards, and commissions.  Anyone who is interested in serving in a volunteer capacity on an authority, board, or commission can apply at Authorities, Boards, and Commissions - City Of Erie (citygrows.com). 

We will continue to work together to ensure that our LGBTQ+ friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues are safe, welcomed, valued, and respected.

To view the full MEI scorecard, please visit the LGBTQ+ Advisory Council page on The City of Erie website at LGBTQ+ Council - Erie, PA.