Center for American Progress

How Congress can illuminate LGBTQI+ experiences — and craft equitable solutions
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How Congress can illuminate LGBTQI+ experiences — and craft equitable solutions

Caroline Medina and Rose Khattar discuss the historic House passage of the LGBTQI+ Data Inclusion Act and underscore how comprehensive data collection is critical to better understand LGBTQI+ communities, shed light on persistent disparities, and craft responsive policy solutions.

This Pride Month, the U.S. House of Representatives took the historic step of passing the LGBTQI+ Data Inclusion Act — which requires federal surveys to collect voluntary, self-disclosed demographic data on sexual orientation, gender identity and variations in sex characteristics, including intersex traits, while maintaining necessary privacy and confidentiality standards. Bipartisan House passage of this bill marks important progress and was supported by a broad coalition of over 150 organizations dedicated to improving the well-being of LGBTQI+ communities. These data will help measure the impact of a wide range of policies, enforce nondiscrimination protections, bring visibility to how this growing portion of the U.S. population is faring in many facets of daily life, as well as generate policy solutions that promote greater equity for LGBTQI+ communities. Now, it’s up to the Senate to pass the LGBTQI+ Data Inclusion Act to help ensure the experiences of the LGBTQI+ community are no longer overlooked.

The federal government conducts surveys on a wide variety of topics and populations and then uses those data to develop policy, program and funding priorities that affect millions of people across the country. This also means the federal government is uniquely positioned to engage in data collection about LGBTQI+ people to generate accurate, consistent and representative data at a large enough scale that allows for researchers to analyze the diversity of experiences among LGBTQI+ communities.

The above excerpt was originally published in The Hill. Click here to view the full article.

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Authors

Caroline Medina

Former Director

Rose Khattar

Former Director of Economic Analysis, Inclusive Economy

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