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Nashville is rated as the most equitable city in the state for LGBTQ people, but could do better by transgender residents

Rachel IacovoneWPLN News
A row of progress pride flags fly prominently outside of gay bar Tribe, and Play next door, on Church Street in Nashville.
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Tennessee cities continue to lag when it comes to LGBTQ protections. That’s according to the latest Municipal Equality Index from the Human Rights Campaign.

Nashville is the only Tennessee city rated above the national average. The city scored particularly high because of the way it treats its LGBTQ employees and the services it offers.

But it still has room for improvement — especially when it comes to providing resources to transgender residents.

City government doesn’t offer transgender-inclusive health care benefits — an issue highlighted last month by Metro Human Relations. And they lost points for not having programming specifically for the transgender community and older LGBTQ adults.

The Human Rights Campaign says the city’s scores are also held back by restrictive Tennessee laws which prohibit non-discrimination ordinances for private employers.

“Cities with a dedication to equality that are in Tennessee and North Carolina, for example, will never be able to score as well as cities with comparable dedication to equality that exist in states without the restrictive laws,” the report reads.

Murfreesboro, Franklin and Johnson City ranked the lowest in the state. And while the scores of cities like Nashville, Knoxville and Memphis have remained steady since last year, Chattanooga and Clarksville both showed improvement toward LGBTQ equality.

Paige Pfleger, Criminal Justice Reporter

Paige Pfleger covers criminal justice for WPLN News. She has investigated guns and juvenile justice as a fellow with ProPublica's Local Reporting Network, and her investigation into domestic violence and firearms dispossession won a regional Edward R. Murrow award and was a finalist for an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award and a Livingston Award. She previously covered criminal justice and addiction in Ohio and was named the state's reporter of the year by the Associated Press. Her work has appeared nationally on NPR, The Washington Post, Marketplace, and PRI's The World, and she has worked in the newsrooms of The Tennessean, Michigan Radio, WHYY, Vox and NPR headquarters in DC.

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