Georgia’s latest municipality to explicitly protect LGBTQ people.

July 11, 2023 (DeKalb County, GA) – Today, by unanimous vote, the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners passed a nondiscrimination ordinance providing critical public accommodation protections to LGBTQ folks and other marginalized groups who live, work, and visit DeKalb County as well as explicit employment protections to LGBTQ county employees.

“This ordinance took a lot of work by a lot of people, and I’m grateful to all of them. I want to specifically thank all of the Commissioners for their work and support, and all of the local advocates in DeKalb County who fought persistently to get to today. The passage of this ordinance provides an additional 400,000 Georgians the necessary protections from discrimination that we all deserve,” said Jeff Graham, Georgia Equality’s executive director.

“We at Georgia Equality are proud to have been involved in this work with DeKalb County, and we look forward to working with the commission and administration in the future to continue adopting laws and policies that promote fairness, safety, and opportunity for members of DeKalb’s LGBTQ community.”

Atlanta was Georgia’s first city to pass a nondiscrimination ordinance over 20 years ago, and the second did not come until the City of Doraville in 2018. After Doraville, several other cities in DeKalb County passed similar ordinances including Decatur, Clarkston, Chamblee, Dunwoody, and Brookhaven.

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Founded in 1995, Georgia Equality is the state’s largest advocacy organization working to advance fairness, safety and opportunity for Georgia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, and our allies.