Independent. Defensible. Annual since 2019.
The State LGBTQ+ Business Climate Index is a research project of Out Leadership, the global LGBTQ+ business network connecting CEOs and senior executives across leading companies.
Out Leadership publishes the State LGBTQ+ Business Climate Index each year as a tool for executives, investors, talent leaders, journalists, policymakers, and civil-society partners. The Index measures the laws, policies, and political environments that shape the experience of LGBTQ+ people in each U.S. state — and, by extension, the operating environment for the companies that employ them.
The 2026 edition expands the framework from 20 to 32 indicators across five categories: Legal / Non-Discrimination, Youth / Family, Political / Religious, Health / Safety, and Work / Economic. Every indicator is scored on a transparent 1–5 rubric. Every score is sourced to public data — the Movement Advancement Project, the Human Rights Campaign, the Williams Institute, the American Library Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Census Bureau, the FBI, the CDC, the ACLU, and federal court records.
The 2026 framework expansion
The 12 new 2026 indicators capture the recent wave of state legislative activity that the 20-indicator legacy framework was not built to measure: bathroom and facility access, drag-performance restrictions, pronoun and name-use rules in schools, library and book bans, transgender athlete participation, DEI restrictions, attorney-general litigation posture, adult gender-affirming-care access, shield laws, SOGI data collection, the state's own posture as an LGBTQ+ employer, and corporate-policy alignment between the state and the companies headquartered there.
Both the legacy /100 score and the expanded /100 score are published side-by-side throughout the report and on every state page on this site, so year-over-year comparison remains apples-to-apples.
Legal review
The 2026 CEO Business Briefs received pro bono legal review by Ropes & Gray. Legal precedents and statutory citations — including Chiles v. Salazar (March 2026) and U.S. v. Skrmetti (June 2025) — are footnoted in the relevant state briefs.
Acknowledgments
The original 2019 Index was funded by the Gill Foundation. Dr. Rachel Golden contributed to the 2026 framework expansion. The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law provides the labor-economics research underpinning the Work / Economic category. America Competes provided the Risk Assessment scoring methodology used in the State CEO Briefs.
About Out Leadership
Out Leadership is the global LGBTQ+ business network. We work with CEOs and senior executives at leading companies, building the business case for LGBTQ+ inclusion and expanding LGBTQ+ talent pipelines. outleadership.com
Press & inquiries
For press, data partnerships, or speaking inquiries, please contact info@outleadership.com. Researchers and journalists may use the data on this site with attribution: Out Leadership, 2026 State LGBTQ+ Business Climate Index.