Utah slips to No. 30 nationally as Out Leadership’s 2026 LGBTQ+ Business Climate Index finds ‘significant legislative backslide’

Utah’s standing in the nation’s most closely watched measure of LGBTQ+ business and legal climate took its steepest fall in years, according to the ninth annual State LGBTQ+ Business Climate Index released by Out Leadership, the global LGBTQ+ business network.

The Beehive State scored 44.7 out of 100 points in the 2026 Index, placing it 30th out of 50 states — a “Low-Middle” tier ranking that report authors say reflects “increased legislative hostility towards the LGBTQ+ community” over the past year. The drop is notable: under the Index’s newly expanded scoring framework, Utah fell four ranking positions, which the report described as “the largest fall among states scoring above 40.”

For a state that has spent the last decade building a reputation, helped along by the Salt Lake City tourism office’s own LGBTQ+ marketing efforts and the presence of the Utah Pride Festival, as a relatively moderate outlier in a conservative region, the 2026 findings show a more complicated picture, one of a business-friendly economy increasingly shadowed by an aggressive legislative session.

What the Index measures

Out Leadership has published the State LGBTQ+ Business Climate Index annually since 2019; it bills itself as the global LGBTQ+ business network connecting CEOs and senior executives across major companies. The Index is designed as a tool for executives, investors, talent leaders, journalists, policymakers, and civil-society groups to assess the legal and political environment shaping LGBTQ+ life and, by extension, the workplace climate for LGBTQ+ employees in each U.S. state.

This year’s edition marks the most substantial methodological overhaul in the report’s history. Out Leadership expanded its scoring framework from 20 indicators to 32, spread across five categories: Legal/Non-Discrimination, Youth/Family Support, Political/Religious, Health/Safety, and Work/Economic. Each indicator is scored on a 1-to-5 scale, with sourcing drawn from organizations including the Movement Advancement Project, the Human Rights Campaign, the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, the American Library Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Census Bureau, the FBI, the CDC, and the ACLU.

The 12 new indicators added this year were built specifically to capture a wave of state-level legislation that the old framework wasn’t designed to track: bathroom and facility access restrictions, drag-performance bans, pronoun and name-use rules in schools, library and book restrictions, transgender athletic participation bans, DEI program restrictions, state attorneys general’s litigation posture on LGBTQ+ issues, adult gender-affirming care restrictions, “shield law” policies, state collection of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) data, whether the state itself functions as an LGBTQ+-inclusive employer, and how aligned state policy is with the practices of companies headquartered there.

Because the new framework changes the math, Out Leadership is publishing both a “legacy” /100 score, comparable to prior years, and the new “expanded” /100 score side by side on every state page, facilitating apples-to-apples year-over-year comparison. Utah’s legacy score for 2026 came in at 51.5 — still down from 52.5 in 2025 and 53.5 in 2024 — while the expanded score of 44.7 illustrates just how much additional ground the state loses once the dozen new indicators are factored in.

The report received pro bono legal review this year from the law firm Ropes & Gray, with statutory citations and legal precedents — including the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Chiles v. Salazar (March 2026) and United States v. Skrmetti (June 2025) — footnoted throughout the state-by-state briefs.

How Utah scored

Utah’s category breakdown shows uneven results across the five pillars measured by the Index:

• Legal/Non-Discrimination: 16.0 of 30 (53%)
• Youth/Family Support: 18.2 of 35 (52%)
• Political/Religious: 11.3 of 30 (38%)
• Health/Safety: 12.0 of 30 (40%)
• Work/Economic: 14.0 of 35 (40%)

Utah’s strongest individual indicators include its 2015 nondiscrimination law covering sexual orientation and gender identity in employment and housing, passed five years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s own employment discrimination ruling, along with its hate crimes statute, its ban on “no promo homo” laws in schools, and its 2020 ban on conversion therapy for minors, each of which scored a perfect 5 out of 5 on the Index’s rubric.

But those bright spots are offset by a long list of indicators scoring at or near the bottom of the scale: birth certificate policy, family support and adoption/foster parentage protections, health-access provisions under Medicaid and state insurance rules, HIV criminalization reform, and the governor’s overall LGBTQ+ record all scored a 1.0 out of 5. Several of the Index’s new 2026 indicators — bathroom and facility access, pronoun and name-use restrictions in schools, transgender athletic participation, DEI program restrictions, adult gender-affirming care access, shield laws, SOGI data collection, and the state’s posture as an LGBTQ+ employer — also landed at the bottom of the scale.

The report singles out Utah Attorney General Derek Brown, a Republican sworn in last year, as a “Coalition joiner” on the Index’s new AG-scoring metric, earning a 2 out of 5. That places Brown among attorneys general who have signed onto multistate amicus briefs or coalition letters opposing LGBTQ+ protections without personally leading the most aggressive litigation nationally. The report notes his record is “still developing” and recommends Utah employers track his enforcement priorities going forward.

Gov. Spencer Cox and both of Utah’s U.S. senators, John Curtis and Mike Lee, were also assessed individually. The Index characterizes Cox and Curtis as “generally hostile to LGBTQ+ protections,” while Lee is described as “strongly hostile.”

Two other states in the Intermountain West rank in the top or bottom 10: Colorado ranks the 9th highest in the Index, while Idaho is 48th of the 50 states.

The economic stakes

Beyond the political scorecard, the Index frames its findings squarely as a business argument, tallying what it calls the economic cost of an unwelcoming legal climate. According to Williams Institute data cited in the report, an estimated 6.1% of Utah’s adult population identifies as LGBTQ+, representing $6.3 billion in annual personal income. The report calculates that comprehensive nondiscrimination protections could unlock a potential $9.5 billion annual GDP gain for the state.

The Index also puts a dollar figure on turnover costs tied to workplace climate, estimating it costs Utah employers an average of $9,292 to replace a general employee and roughly $351,000 to replace a senior executive — costs the report argues rise when LGBTQ+ workers don’t feel safe or welcome on the job. Citing consumer research, the report notes that 54% of Millennial and Gen Z consumers say they’re more likely to choose a brand with LGBTQ+-inclusive advertising and policies over a competitor.

The ACLU is currently tracking eight anti-LGBTQ+ bills moving through the Utah Legislature as part of its 2025-26 legislative tracker, according to the report.

A busy legislative session

Much of Utah’s 2026 score decline traces to action during this year’s legislative session, which ran from January through March. Lawmakers passed HB 174, creating a permanent statewide ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors, with a narrow exception for those already receiving treatment. Legislators also approved HB 404, which allows private landlords to deny certain housing arrangements based on sex assigned at birth, and HB258, which requires insurance providers covering gender-affirming care also to cover de-transitioning care.

Several more restrictive bills were introduced but ultimately failed, including HB 183, a sweeping measure that would have stripped gender identity from the state’s hate crimes law and eliminated several nondiscrimination protections for transgender Utahns before being significantly watered down and dying in committee; HB 193, which would have banned public funds for gender-affirming care and died in the Senate; and HB95, which would have shielded public employees who refuse to use a person’s correct pronouns and never received a committee hearing.

The report also points to earlier state actions still shaping the landscape, including HB77, signed in 2025, which bans displaying the LGBTQ+ pride flag in state and local government buildings and schools, and HB257, the 2024 law restricting transgender individuals’ use of restrooms and locker rooms in government buildings and public schools.

Community continues organizing

Despite the legislative headwinds, the report notes that Utah’s LGBTQ+ community is still organizationally active, pointing to the annual Utah Pride Festival organized by the Utah Pride Center in downtown Salt Lake City and featuring a parade, film festival, Dyke March and interfaith service as an example of sustained community visibility even during a hostile political environment.

Out Leadership makes both the full 2026 report and individual state CEO briefs, including Utah’s, available for download at stateclimateindex.com, along with an interactive map that allows comparison across all 50 states. The organization encourages journalists and researchers to cite the data as “Out Leadership, 2026 State LGBTQ+ Business Climate Index.”