Tonight the Elsmere City Council voted 4-1 to approve Kentucky's twenty-fourth Fairness Ordinance, protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations. With a population of 9,159, Elsmere joins three other Kenton County cities with Fairness Ordinances – Covington, Crescent Springs, and Fort Mitchell.
Led by City Council Member Aaron Moore, the Elsmere vote brings the total population covered by Fairness Ordinances in Kenton County to nearly thirty-eight percent, with just over thirty-one percent of Kentuckians covered statewide. Despite sustained support for LGBTQ discrimination protections through local Fairness Ordinances for more than two decades, the Kentucky General Assembly continues to refuse to act on Statewide Fairness Laws in the Kentucky Senate and House.
The twenty-four Kentucky municipalities that have approved local Fairness Ordinances include:
- Louisville (1999)
- Lexington (1999)
- Covington (2003)
- Vicco (2013)
- Frankfort (2013)
- Morehead (2013)
- Danville (2014)
- Midway (2015)
- Paducah (2018)
- Maysville (2018)
- Henderson (2019)
- Dayton (2019)
- Georgetown (2019)
- Versailles (2019)
- Bellevue (2019)
- Highland Heights (2019)
- Fort Thomas (2020)
- Woodford County (2020)
- Cold Spring (2020)
- Newport (2020)
- Crescent Springs (2021)
- Augusta (2021)
- Fort Mitchell (2021)
- and Elsmere (2022).
Two additional Kentucky cities have partial Fairness Ordinances that extend some LGBTQ discrimination protections, including Ashland (housing protections) and Cynthiana (housing and public accommodations protections).
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