Corporate Equality Index 2023-2024

Key Findings

Topline Findings from New Criteria

Transgender Inclusion in the Workplace: Healthcare and Beyond

Accelerating Global Equality

The business case for equality knows no borders

Although the push for LGBTQ+ inclusive workplaces began largely as an undertaking within the United States and Europe, the conversation around inclusivity is now pointedly more prominent among international stakeholders. The bottom line is undeniable – in a global marketplace, equality knows no borders.

Working hand-in-hand with both U.S.-based and international businesses, HRC made the case that inclusion efforts did not have to be contained to any one border. With many multinational companies employing persons outside of the United States, HRC encouraged CEI participants to consider how their adopted inclusive policies and practices could and would impact their workforces in countries with less tolerant legal and cultural stances towards LGBTQ+ communities.

To this effort, in 2016, the Corporate Equality Index criteria were expanded to require that companies with global operations extend their nondiscrimination policies across all their operations. This change helped drive more widespread adoption of nondiscrimination policies that include sexual orientation and gender identity protections. In 2016, 54% of CEI-rated companies had global operations and 95 percent of those companies extended their LGBTQ+ inclusive nondiscrimination policies globally. With the 2023-2024 CEI, 65 percent of rated companies have global operations and over 99 percent extend those protections globally.

The process towards LGBTQ+ inclusion does not end with nondiscrimination policies. Companies continue to amplify their global LGBTQ+ inclusion efforts through the targeted expansion of equitable benefits and inclusive practices. Globally, companies are adopting critical benefits such as domestic partner recognition and transgender-inclusive healthcare benefits, as well as organizational training and capacity building. These companies are also deepening employee engagement efforts by expanding employee resource groups for LGBTQ+ workers and their allies.

In the past, and for this 2023-2024 edition, the CEI survey collected information on global efforts to provide domestic partner benefits and transgender-inclusive benefits, support for global chapters of employee resource groups, and whether companies engage externally with LGBTQ+ communities outside the U.S. Across all categories, a majority of companies report extending these benefits and inclusive practices beyond U.S. borders.

^{1 At the HRC Foundation, we use the acronym “LGBTQ+” to represent the diversity of the greater lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities. We recognize that this acronym is U.S.-centric and that communities around the world recognize different identities and acronyms. When working in different communities, we adjust our language to reflect local customs.}

Criteria 1: Workforce Protections

THE WORKFORCE PROTECTIONS criteria of the CEI call for a written employment non-discrimination policy across all operations that includes both “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”. For companies with operations outside of the U.S., the policy must be extended across the global workforce.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people continue to face discrimination in employment because of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, creating a need for explicit non-discrimination policies. The 2020 SCOTUS ruling of Bostock v. Clayton County, cemented federal protections for LGBTQ+ workers, that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is a form of sex discrimination prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Clearly enumerated nondiscrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity are essential to LGBTQ+ workforce equity and inclusion. The policies help to ensure:

• Equal opportunity for all employees;
• Diverse talent acquisition and retention for broader economic growth; and,
• Employers are kept space with changing legal and public opinion landscapes.

Furthermore, these policies represent minimal upfront costs. Rates of litigation, upon implementation, are consistent with other protected classes.

Criteria 2: Inclusive Benefits

IN THE U.S., EMPLOYER-PROVIDED HEALTH INSURANCE IS THE SINGLE LARGEST source of healthcare coverage. Competitive employer-provided benefits packages are critical to attracting and retaining talent. Widespread employer adoption of such packages helps to ensure that offering LGBTQ+ inclusive benefits to employees and their families is a low-cost, high-return proposition for businesses. In addition, equitable benefits structures align with the principle of equal compensation for equal work. Apart from actual wages paid, benefits can account, on average, for approximately 30 percent of employees’ overall compensation (BOL 2019). By amending their benefits structures, employers ensure that they extend this valuable bundle of benefits to their workforce equitably, irrespective of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Most employers have reported an overall increase of less than 3.5 percent in total benefits costs when they implement partner benefits and marginal increases related to transgender-inclusive healthcare coverage (i.e., a fraction of a decimal point of cost calculations).

The HRC Foundation rates and gives guidance on two key components of equal health insurance benefits:

• Parity between benefits available for employees’ spouses and partners; and,

• Affirmative transgender-inclusive healthcare benefits and removal of all broad exclusions to coverage across plan offerings.

In addition, employers are rated on having full parity across their entire suite of benefits – including non-healthcare benefits such as leave, retirement, and others – between spouses and partners.

LGBTQ+ inclusive benefits packages are:

• Necessary for talent acquisition and retention and broader economic growth;

• Equal compensation for equal work;

• Helping employers keep pace with changing legal landscape and workforce expectations; and,

• Minimal upfront costs (on average 1% increase for corporate employers’ overall health insurance costs).

The premise of parity underlies the inclusive benefits section of the CEI criteria. In its CEI scoring, the HRC Foundation does not penalize an employer if a particular benefit is not offered to any employees but holds employers accountable to provide LGBTQ+ employees and their families with the same benefits available to other employees across available benefits packages. For example, where routine care, hormone therapies, and medically necessary surgeries are available to cisgender (non-transgender) people, these same healthcare benefits must also be extended to transgender people covered by the plan. Many employers have begun to comprehensively address health insurance coverage for transgender individuals, and most have experienced insignificant or no premium increases as a result.

Continued Need for Partner Benefits

Since 2002, the CEI has required parity between spousal and partner benefits. After the United States v. Windsor and before the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court rulings, HRC released a position paper cautioning against a marriage-only standard for accessing healthcare coverage, which is an unreasonable standard given the many other legal vulnerabilities beyond their right to marry that continue to affect LGBTQ+ individuals’ freedom.

Since the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which brought marriage equality nationwide by ruling that marriage is a fundamental right to which same-sex couples should have the same access as opposite-sex couples, employers have sought to do the right thing in the name of equality and provide spousal benefits to both same- and different-sex married couples. In December 2022, the U.S. Senate passed the Respect for Marriage Act (RMA) — a bill that will codify federal marriage equality by guaranteeing the federal rights, benefits and obligations of marriages in the federal code; repeal the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA); and affirm that public acts, records and proceedings should be recognized by all states. By doing so, it protects the status quo that exists following the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark rulings in Loving v. Virginia (1967), Windsor v. United States (2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) — decisions that together made equal marriage the law of the land.

While marriage equality is undoubtedly a monumental step toward full equality, LGBTQ+ individuals remain at risk for discrimination in many other aspects of daily life. Until LGBTQ+ Americans have full equality through the federal Equality Act, domestic partner benefits will remain an essential CEI standard that helps to fill the void left by federal and state law and ensure LGBTQ+ workers and their families receive equitable benefits whether married or partnered.

Domestic partner benefits do not only serve same-sex couples. In fact, over the last decade, most businesses that have offered same-sex partner benefits also extended these to different-sex partners. Employers have increasingly recognized the value of providing necessary benefits to meet the needs of their diverse workforces.

In total, 962 businesses met the standard in this year’s survey. The CEI continues to reflect best practices for LGBTQ+ workers and their families.

Understanding Transgender-Inclusive Healthcare Coverage

In 2004, the HRC Foundation identified transgender-inclusive healthcare coverage as a focus area for educational outreach and as a scored component of the CEI criteria.

From 2006 through 2011, a top CEI score meant businesses needed to mitigate at least one exclusion among five critical categories of transgender healthcare, namely: mental health, pharmacy benefits for hormone therapy, medical visits and lab procedures related to hormone therapy, surgical procedures, and short-term leave for surgical procedures. While awareness of barriers to transgender healthcare coverage steadily increased, a majority of CEI-rated businesses plateaued in offering mental healthcare coverage and/or short-term leave for surgical procedures and did not mitigate exclusions related to other medically necessary treatments.

In 2009, the HRC Foundation announced a major change to what would be the 2012 CEI criteria. To earn a top rating of 100 percent, a business needed not just to mitigate one or more exclusions but also to address the root problem of transgender exclusion in coverage and fully affirm healthcare coverage for medically necessary transition-related care and other routine and chronic conditions. The HRC Foundation embarked on a massive campaign of educational and consultative efforts to address healthcare and insurance disparities for the transgender population and their families, including outreach to leading health insurance companies, direct consultation with both fully- and self-insured employers to modify their health insurance plans, and collection and dissemination of cost and utilization data from leading businesses.

Growth of Trans Benefits Over Time

Criteria 3: Supporting an Inclusive Culture

LGBTQ+ Internal Training and Accountability

Equitable policies and benefits are critical to LGBTQ+ inclusion in the workforce but alone are not sufficient to support a truly inclusive culture within a workplace. Employers recognize that beyond the letter of a policy, additional programming and educational efforts are necessary.

Ultimately, businesses invest in organizational competency programs because:

• Policy does not equal practice;

• Invisible diversity requires unique training focus and defined safe space programs and resources. Which is why intersectional education is key to any inclusive workplace;

• Senior-level buy-in and accountability metrics effect change quickly and for the long term; and,

• Retaining workers is largely about everyday experiences on the job.

Many employers integrate educational programs into already existing diversity and inclusion programs. To obtain full credit in this criterion, employers must show at least four types of organizational competency programs and one of those programs needs to include the core components of intersectionality in the workplace. LGBTQ+ workers hold multiple identities and those who carry more than one historically marginalized identity, move through the world and the workplace with an experience that’s greater than the sum of its parts. That is why we require that businesses provide explicit intersectionality training to their workforce. This comprehensive metric is provided as accountability for employers to devote resources to creating and maintaining a climate of inclusion.

Some of the most common forms of LGBTQ+ inclusion efforts are:

• Diversity training programs such as new hire, manager, and professional development training;

• LGBTQ+ metrics through self-identification programs;

• Performance evaluation mechanisms for senior leadership; and,

• Integration of intersectionality in professional development, skills-based or other trainings

LGBTQ+ Data Collection

It is imperative to the future success of any company to understand the lived experiences of your workers to ensure implemented policies and practices have the intended impact. In order to do so, employers have sought ways to learn more about their workforce to build intentional initiatives that impact every employee in a positive way. Asking your employees to share details about themselves and their families can be seem like a risky thing for some employees, especially collecting data on identities that have historically not been accepted in the workplace or deemed “unprofessional” based on limited and outdated concepts of professionalism, especially those concepts rooted in assimilation versus individuality.

Over the years, companies have employed multiple methods of collecting this data, including employee engagement surveys and employee resource group membership, but these methods are limited and have yielded minimal data on which to base to take action on. Employee engagement surveys are an example of one of those methods. These surveys can include optional questions that allow LGBTQ+ employees to self-identify based on gender identity or sexual orientation. This year, HRC saw a record number of companies collecting LGBTQ+ data from their employees. 832 companies are tracking sexual orientation and gender identity in their human resource information systems (HRIS), which is a 77% increase over the 2022 CEI.

Transgender Inclusion Best Practices

This year, for the first time, the HRC is requiring businesses to take the next step in transgender workplace inclusion. Providing healthcare and wellness benefits the transgender employees and their families is essential to their very lives, but that’s not all employers can do. When businesses are committed to creating safe and inclusive workplaces, that can only be achieved when all employees are included. Adopting inclusive practices in the workplace help foster a more accepting and affirming workplace, especially for the LGBTQ+ community. Policies such as; inclusive dress codes, transgender inclusive restroom and facility policies, and procedures that allow employees to display their chosen name and display their pronouns in directories. These are examples of a few policies employers should review to ensure every employee can see themselves reflected in it.

LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group or Diversity Council

Many large employers have formally recognized employee resource groups (ERGs), also known as employee networks, business resources, or affinity groups, for diverse populations of their workforce, including women, people of color, veterans, parents, people of varied abilities, and LGBTQ+ people and their allies. The purpose of these groups is two-fold:

• To foster a sense of community and visibility of these diverse populations within a business; and

• To leverage each unique populations’ networks and skills to help accomplish business goals such as market innovation, recruitment and retention of talent.

Employee resource groups are great platforms for leadership opportunities for LGBTQ+ and allied employees to better their own work environments. In addition, the reach of many ERGs extends beyond the everyday affairs of an employer to policy making, representing the employer at professional events and external activities, participating in prospective employee recruitment efforts, mentoring, and other retention-focused programming.

Employee resource groups that are focused on the LGBTQ+ workforce empower employees as change agents and promote inclusion for LGBTQ+ employees within the workplace. Recognizing the differences in businesses rated in the CEI, this criterion can also be met with an organization-wide diversity council or working group with a mission that specifically includes LGBTQ+ diversity and inclusion.

Employees who do not identify as LGBTQ+ themselves, but are invested in workplace inclusion and equality, are increasing their numbers within ERG ranks. While mission statements of ERGs are specific to LGBTQ+ inclusion, an increasing number of ally-identified colleagues are encouraged to join as membership is not limited to those who are LGBTQ+ but is open to all supporters of equality.

ERGs have embraced allies as critical supporters of the full LGBTQ+ community, as allies bring their own unique voice and vantage point to workplace equality. The profile and impact of an employee resource group is greatly enhanced by an active executive champion for the group.

Criteria 4 - Corporate Social Responsibility

Efforts in Outreach and Engagement to Broader LGBTQ+ Community

Businesses have extensive programs to engage with key markets and the communities in which they operate. Public commitment in the CEI is measured through a number of individual engagements, namely through:

Marketing, advertising and sponsorship efforts as well as;

• LGBTQ+ specific recruiting efforts

• Philanthropic contributions

• LGBTQ+ supplier diversity programs; and,

• Public policy weigh-in.

• LGBTQ+ inclusive products and services

Additionally, the CEI includes a set of standards around foundational giving to fully align a business’s actions with its core values and to raise the bar for corporate social responsibility.

• Businesses see advantages in going public with their commitment to equality, including:

  • Reputational benefits to supporting equality groups and programs;

  • A corporate case for LGBTQ+ legal equality: they are on the right side of history and eliminate barriers to investment;

  • Attracting and retaining next generation of workers and consumers – the importance of communicating pro-equality messages to millennials; and,

  • LGBTQ+ public support is seen as a bellwether for broader issues of diversity and inclusion.

Recruiting

Professional events such as the annual Out & Equal Workplace Summit, the Lavender Law Conference, and the Reaching Out MBA (ROMBA) Conference and Career Expo are filled with highly-rated CEI employers looking to attract diverse employees. Employers’ presence at these and other events sends a clear message to potential employees that LGBTQ+ diversity is part of company culture, and that LGBTQ+ candidates are valued as the best and the brightest across industries, geographies and trades. While many companies experienced budget cuts in DEI programs, CEI-rated businesses remained engaged.

Marketing & Advertising

Ad campaigns and sponsorships further this message of company values to the public. Increasingly, ads with authentic images of LGBTQ+ people are featured in both LGBTQ+ media outlets and general press alike. Corporate philanthropic activities ranging from financial support to in-kind donations of products or services can bolster a business’s profile in the LGBTQ+ community.

Philanthropy

Corporate giving to organizations promoting LGBTQ+ health, education or political efforts further demonstrates this commitment to broader LGBTQ+ equality. Typically, these efforts have a strategic connection to the core mission of a business, such as a law firm’s pro bono legal support of organizations tasked with direct legal representation of LGBTQ+ individuals.

Supplier Diversity

Supplier diversity programs ensure that the procurement process includes specific opportunities for minority-owned businesses, including women-owned, veteran-owned and, more recently, LGBTQ+ owned businesses. Supplier diversity initiatives have existed in the business community for at least three decades, going back to the inception of such groups like the National Association of Women Business Owners and the National Minority Business Council, both founded in the early 1970s to promote the inclusion of these under-utilized entrepreneurial groups. Furthermore, there are federal initiatives such as the Center for Veterans Enterprise that are designed to assist U.S. veterans in launching and thriving in private business. These initiatives intend to give more equitable opportunities to those would-be small business owners who are more likely to face social and practical barriers to success.

The National LGBT Chamber of Commerce began certifying LGBTQ+ owned small businesses in 2002, a process that requires substantiation of majority LGBTQ+ ownership in a business and verification of a business’ good standing in the community. Supplier diversity initiatives are a win-win relationship for both the LGBTQ+ owned small businesses and the businesses that contract them.

These businesses are enjoying a multitude of benefits, including a supply chain that better reflects the diverse communities in which they operate, and in turn, garnering sharper innovation and business solutions.

Corporate Social Responsibility

A business’s non-discrimination policies should not be limited to human resources or diversity and inclusion. The CEI’s Corporate Social Responsibility criteria ensure that sexual orientation and gender identity protections apply to those standards that businesses require their vendors or suppliers to adhere to, as well as recipients of their philanthropic funds.

Supplier/Vendor Standards Include LGBTQ+ Nondiscrimination

Large businesses typically rely on other businesses for goods or services, and businesses of the size included in the CEI typically have set standards and guidelines already embedded in their procurement. To ensure that suppliers act in a manner that adheres to a business’s own standards, businesses must establish standards of conduct that set expectations for behavior of their suppliers.

Philanthropic Giving Guidelines

The HRC Foundation has always held businesses accountable for the types of organizations receiving their philanthropic dollars. Historically, the CEI had a mechanism to account for foundational corporate giving to any organization whose explicit mission included efforts to undermine LGBTQ+ equality. This framework was widened in 2016 to hold companies accountable for any giving to a non-religious organization with an explicit policy of discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. This requirement sets the standards around responsible foundational giving and ensures that a top-rated business does not provide philanthropic support to organizations whose values do not align with theirs.

The requirement is that a top-rated business must implement internal requirements prohibiting company or law firm philanthropic giving to non-religious organizations that have a written policy of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or have a policy explicitly permitting its own chapters, affiliates, etc. to discriminate.

Defining New Areas of Impact

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation is grateful for the opportunity to raise the bar for LGBTQ+ inclusive workplaces. This criteria adjustment reflects a 20-year history of observation, learning, and growth that the HRC is proud to continue to this day. While we believe that our previous criteria set an ideal benchmark in the past, the current and continuing issues seen within the LGBTQ+ community required us to evolve our criteria to meet the ever-changing needs of the community’s members and their families.

Through these updated areas of impact that expound upon our existing criteria, we hope to elevate the public’s understanding of what an LGBTQ+ inclusive workplace looks and feels like.

New Criteria Roll-Out

Following the release of this report, the 2023 CEI report will be open for survey submission in the Spring of 2023 and released in November of 2023 to realign with the report’s original release schedule. This realignment will enable the report to be accessible before Black Friday and ensure that the CEI can be used as a tool for consumers and the LGBTQ+ community in making purchasing decisions during the year’s busiest holiday season.

The scheduled roll-out of the new criteria will enable us to devote substantial time, energy, and resources to collaborate with companies in an effort to bring real change to the community.

HRC is proud to partner with leading employers on corporate initiatives that drive equality. These corporate initiatives include the Business Statement on Anti-LGBTQ+ State Legislation with over 300 major employer signatories, the LGBTQ Refugees Mentorship Initiative, and Working Positively, which invites employers to commit to being visible role models in support of HIV-positive employees and other chronic illnesses.

The latest employer activation with HRC is the Count Us In Pledge, an effort to elevate the business sector’s allyship and voice in support of transgender and non-binary people, particularly employees and their families. The pledge, with over 100 large employer signatories, represents a cross-sector commitment to stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community during this unprecedented state of emergency by pledging the following:

• To be proud and public LGBTQ+ allies, calling on lawmakers to abandon any efforts to discriminate and reject anti-LGBTQ threats to company values of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

• To raise up honest and authentic experiences of LGBTQ+ Americans, including those of employees and customers in the transgender and non-binary community; and

• To ensure transgender and non-binary employees and their families have access to the health and medical care they need, where possible under the law.

And one of the largest coalition initiatives is the Business Coalition for the Equality Act. HRC’s Business Coalition for the Equality Act is a group of 552 leading U.S. employers that support the Equality Act, federal legislation that would provide the same basic protections to LGBTQ+ people that are provided to other federally protected groups. Coalition member companies represent nearly every industry, employ over 15.3 million people in the U.S., command over $7.2 trillion in revenue, and have operations in all 50 states.

The Equality Act creates clear, consistent protections to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment ensuring that LGBTQ+ employees are hired, fired, and promoted based on their performance. In addition, the bill provides protections from discrimination in housing, credit, and jury service for LGBTQ+ people. The bill also prohibits discrimination in public spaces and services and protects against discrimination in the receipt of federal funding on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

The historic Obergefell v. Hodges case in 2015 gave same-sex couples the right to marriage, and, since then, state legislators across the country have responded by proposing hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills. However, companies opposed (and still oppose) these discriminatory bills. Over the last seven years, countless companies in all 50 states have spoken out against attempts to undermine LGBTQ+ civil rights. Discriminatory bills that attempt to curb access to public services for transgender people, deny basic services to LGBTQ+ families, or preempt local nondiscrimination ordinances put company employees, employee families, and customers at risk.

CEI-rated employers are on record supporting broad issues of LGBTQ+ equality at the local, state, and federal levels, including through amicus briefs that are submitted during court cases to support pro-LGBTQ+ legislation and rulings.

Private sector support for the federal Equality Act surged within the last two years and, at present, 552 major employers are signatories on HRC’s The Business Coalition for the Equality Act.

Corporate Equality Index 2023-2024

The HRC Foundation’s CEI rating system is designed for mid- to large-sized businesses (500 full-time employees and above) and divided into three key categories of criteria:

• Non-discrimination policies across business entities;

• Equitable benefits for LGBTQ+ workers and their families; and,

• Supporting an inclusive culture and corporate social responsibility.

Launched in 2002, the CEI is the first internationally recognized benchmarking report for businesses to gauge their level of LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion against competitors. In addition to seeing a growth in the number of highly-rated employers, the CEI has also seen great success in the reach of the survey. The number of employers officially rated has expanded from 319 original participants to a current participant count of 1384, encompassing all major industry sectors.

Invitations and Participation

The largest and most successful U.S. employers are invited to participate in the CEI and are identified through the following lists*:

• Fortune magazine’s 1,000 largest publicly- and privately-traded businesses (2022 Fortune 1,000); and

• American Lawyer magazine’s top 200 revenue-grossing law firms (2022 AmLaw 200).

Additionally, any private-sector, for-profit employer with 500 or more full-time U.S. employees can request to participate, including those that are privately held.

*Note: Due to the staggered timelines of the ranking lists and when contact lists are made available, the ranking year lags the CEI survey year by one year and the CEI publication year by up to two years.

How We Obtain Information

The primary source of information for the Corporate Equality Index rating each business received is the CEI survey sent every year to previous and prospective respondents. The web-based survey included links to sample policies and other guidance, found on the HRC Foundation website.

HRC Foundation staff provided additional assistance and direct consultation throughout the process and reviewed submitted documentation (required within each section) for appropriate language and consistency with survey answers.

Invitations for the CEI 2023-2024 survey were emailed and mailed in April of 2023 and responses were due back in July of 2023. If a business had previously participated in the CEI, surveys were first sent to the individual(s) responsible for prior submissions. If a business had not previously participated in the CEI, surveys were sent to the chief executive officer or managing partner of the firm, as well as the highest-level executive(s) responsible for human resources, diversity, communications, or community engagement, if obtaining the contact information for these executives was possible.

The information required to generate CEI ratings for businesses is difficult to ascertain from public records alone. In addition to the self-reporting provided through the CEI survey, we investigated and cross-checked the policies and practices of the rated businesses, any connections with organizations that engage in anti-LGBTQ+ activities, and news accounts of efforts that undermine LGBTQ+ equality writ large (e.g., through case law efforts or public policy lobbying actions). Employers were not rated until all appropriate information had been gathered and verified to the greatest extent possible. Businesses were invited to provide HRC Foundation staff with any additional information or updates before this report went to print.

In total, the sources used include:

• The HRC Foundation’s CEI survey;

• Internal Revenue Service 990 tax filings reviewed for any business foundation’s gifts to anti-LGBTQ+ groups;

• Case law and news accounts regarding findings of discrimination and corporate responsibility and the LGBTQ+ community-at-large; and,

• Individuals that report verifiable information to the HRC Foundation.

If a business was found to have a connection with an anti-LGBTQ+ organization or activity, the HRC Foundation contacted the business and provided it with an opportunity to respond and, to the best of its ability, to mitigate the harm done and ensure that no such action would occur in the future. Businesses unwilling to do so would have been penalized up to - 25 points from their overall rating through Criterion 5.

With the rise of extremists attacks on corporate advocacy and a businesses support of the LGBTQ+ community, the Human Rights Campaign revised the CEI’s Responsible Citizenship criterion to provide better guidance on the need for businesses to reaffirm support for the community when facing anti-LGBTQ+ attacks. Employers will receive up to 25 points deducted from their score for a large-scale official or public anti-LGBTQ+ blemish on their recent records. Scores on this criterion are based on information that has come to HRC’s attention related to topics including but not limited to:

• advocating for public policies or regulations related to LGBTQ+ equality that would be detrimental to employees and their families.

• undue influence by a significant shareholder calculated to undermine a business’s employment policies or practices related to its LGBTQ+ employees;

• opposing shareholder resolutions reasonably aimed at encouraging the adoption of inclusive workplace policies;

• revoking inclusive LGBTQ+ policies or practices;

• engaging in proven practices that are contrary to the business’s written LGBTQ+ employment policies.

• directing corporate charitable contributions to organizations whose primary mission includes advocacy against LGBTQ+ equality;

• failing to uphold established commitments to the LGBTQ+ community resulting from pressure from anti-LGBTQ+ extremists

We define recent records: the time period your current CEI is published until the next CEI report is published, the following survey cycle. This time period is typically 1 year.

Official and Unofficial Ratings

The HRC Foundation may have rated businesses that did not submit a survey for a 2023-2024 rating if the business has submitted a survey in previous years and the information is determined to be accurate, or, if the HRC Foundation has obtained sufficient information to provide an individual rating. In both cases, the HRC Foundation notified the business of the official rating and gave them an opportunity to provide updates or clarification prior to the report release.

Fortune 500-ranked businesses that, after multiple invitations, have never responded to the CEI survey were evaluated independently and have designated unofficial ratings listed in gray in Appendix A. The HRC Foundation proactively evaluates these 111 Fortune-ranked companies for two key reasons:

• To provide the public with accurate information on these major employers; and,

• To ensure that the CEI is truly a benchmarking report among peers.

Because LGBTQ+ workers and prospective employees must navigate the gaps in federal and state protections that affect their employment decisions, our staff assesses the research on these non-surveyed businesses through this same lens, ascertaining what we can from publicly available information and applying those findings to our CEI criteria.

No matter the rating, any business that participates in the CEI is taking on a transparent, credible process of LGBTQ+ inclusion. The HRC Foundation commends the employers that have committed to the public and transparent process of the CEI survey and we invite these 111 companies to do the same.

In total, the CEI 2023-2024 contains official ratings for 489 Fortune 500 businesses, 633 Fortune 1000 businesses, 163 law firms and 698 additional major businesses. With the additional 111 Fortune 500 businesses that have unofficial ratings, the total number of rated businesses is 1,496. Findings in the 2023-2024 CEI report are based on the 1,386 officially rated businesses.

About the Workplace Equality Program

The Corporate Equality Index is a project of the Workplace Equality Program at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. In addition to the CEI, the Workplace Equality Program researches, develops, and advocates for greater equity and inclusion for LGBTQ+ workers at the federal, state, and local levels, and provides support to employers seeking to enhance LGBTQ+ inclusion through education, training, policy, and consulting assistance.

Special Thanks

Thank you to Jay Brown, Chief of Staff, and Eric Bloem, Vice President, Programs and Corporate Advocacy at the Human Campaign Foundation for their leadership and stewardship of the Workplace Equality Program.

Thank you to HRC staff Christopher Huntley, Sam Lau, Hillary Esquina, Laurel Powell, Drew Daniels, Jose Soto, Simon Garcia, and Jared Todd for communication, press and media guidance.

Thank you to Alec Carrasco for his database knowledge and expertise. You always find a way to make everything work.

Thank you to Josette Matoto, Bob Villaflor, and Carly Fox for editorial and design guidance.

Thank you to JoDee Winterhof, Ani Fête-Crews, Cathryn Oakley, David Stacy and Sarah Warbelow for legal and policy guidance.

We would like to express our gratitude to all our HRC colleagues for their collaboration, teamwork and support.