Fact check: Which cities in the US have the highest rates of hate crimes against trans individuals?

1. Local spikes paint a worrying picture — Los Angeles County’s surge demands attention

Local investigative reports and the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations documented a 125% increase in reported hate crimes against transgender people in 2023, with 99 incidents and a majority classified as violent, disproportionately affecting transgender women ^{[4] [2]}. These figures are drawn from county reporting systems and highlight a sharp, localized rise that outpaced prior years, but they reflect local reporting practices and resources; comparisons with other cities require harmonized definitions and reporting thresholds to be valid ^[2].

2. Major-city comparisons: Chicago and Austin also show notable increases

A peer-reviewed hate-and-extremism center found Chicago and Austin alongside Los Angeles among cities with the largest increases in reported hate crimes, noting substantial percentage rises in anti-trans incidents — Los Angeles cited a 68.4% increase in one analysis, while other cities showed large year-over-year changes ^[3]. These findings rely on center-specific methodologies aggregating police reports and local organizations’ data, producing useful trend signals but not an absolute city-by-city ranking because investigative scopes and time windows differ ^[3].

3. National data give context but do not answer city-level ranking questions

FBI national hate-crime statistics and the agency’s Crime Data Explorer provide the most comprehensive federal picture, showing increases in anti-LGBTQ+ and gender-identity–motivated hate crimes in recent years, but the FBI’s published annual summaries emphasize national totals and bias-motivation categories rather than consistent, comparable per-capita city rankings ^{[6] [7] [5]}. Consequently, while the FBI confirms a broader increase in anti-trans bias nationally, it does not supply a definitive list of cities with the highest rates specific to transgender victims ^{[7] [5]}.

4. Specialized trackers and advocacy groups fill gaps but have limits

Organizations like GLAAD’s ALERT Desk and local commissions track incidents that media or law enforcement may not classify as hate crimes, reporting that over half of incidents they track target transgender and gender non-conforming people, with year-over-year increases ^[1]. These datasets are valuable for capturing underreported events and violent patterns, yet they use different inclusion rules and rely partly on media monitoring, so their counts are not directly interchangeable with police-based hate-crime statistics ^[1].

5. Methodological friction: Why city rankings are inconsistent

Differences in reporting definitions, police classification practices, victim willingness to report, and data collection windows drive inconsistencies across sources. Local commissions may count incidents that the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program does not; advocacy trackers include noncriminal bias incidents; and per-capita adjustments are rarely harmonized across studies, leaving percentage-change headlines that can obscure absolute case counts and population context ^{[1] [3] [5]}. These methodological gaps explain why multiple sources name different cities without a single authoritative ranking.

6. What the data consistently show despite gaps: increasing violence and concentrated impacts

Across datasets and reports, a consistent pattern emerges: anti-trans incidents are rising in multiple jurisdictions and are often violent, with certain demographics — particularly transgender women — disproportionately targeted in some urban areas like Los Angeles County ^{[4] [2] [1]}. Whether measured by local spikes, percentage increases, or national trendlines, the combined evidence indicates a worsening environment for transgender people in many U.S. cities, even if exact city rankings remain unresolved ^{[3] [6]}.

7. Where to look next for reliable city-level comparisons

For a defensible city-by-city ranking of hate-crimes against trans people, analysts should triangulate: use FBI crime data for standardized reporting, supplement with local commission and police department hate-crime logs for granularity, and incorporate advocacy trackers to catch unreported incidents; then compute per-capita rates and multi-year baselines to avoid misleading single-year spikes ^{[5] [1] [2]}. Current publicly cited pieces suggest focusing investigative effort on Los Angeles County, Chicago, and Austin as places with notable recent increases, while recognizing the need for harmonized metrics ^{[3] [4]}.

8. Bottom line for readers seeking top-city answers right now

No single source currently produces a universally accepted list of U.S. cities with the highest rates of hate crimes against transgender individuals; however, local reports and specialized trackers consistently flag Los Angeles County, Chicago, and Austin for notable increases, and federal data confirm a national rise in anti-trans incidents. To move from trend signals to a robust ranking requires combining federal, local, and advocacy datasets with consistent definitions and per-capita calculations ^{[4] [3] [5]}.