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Fact check: Which US cities have the highest rates of violence against trans people?
Executive Summary
The available reports converge on a clear pattern: violence against transgender and gender-expansive people in the United States is rising and disproportionately affects Black trans women, with concentrated geographic risk in parts of the South and in some large cities such as Chicago where documented homicides have occurred [1] [2] [3] [4]. However, major trackers and advocacy reports do not offer a comprehensive, up-to-date city-by-city ranking, and existing datasets prioritize incidents, homicides, and regional concentrations rather than per-capita municipal rates [5] [6]. This analysis extracts key claims, compares findings across sources, and flags gaps for readers and policymakers.
1. Sharp claim: Lives lost and the racial skew that demands attention
Multiple reports present the same stark demographic pattern: Black trans women are overrepresented among victims of deadly violence. The 2024 Remembrance Report states Black trans women comprise less than 8% of the U.S. trans population yet account for over 30% of the documented U.S. list of deaths and 50% of losses from violent crimes, and 86% of deaths due to violence involved BIPOC community members [1]. Everytown’s 2023 data similarly notes that half of gun homicides of transgender or gender-expansive people were Black trans women, reinforcing the racialized nature of lethal violence [3]. These figures point to intersectional vulnerabilities shaped by race, gender, and region.
2. Regional focus: The South and city hotspots emerge in different ways
Everytown identifies a pronounced regional concentration of homicides in the South, with 44% of 2023 transgender and gender-expansive homicides occurring there and 80% of those homicides involving firearms [3]. Separately, city-level reporting calls out Chicago as a documented hotspot, with eight homicides of trans women of color in a multi-year period and reportedly low clearance rates relative to non-trans homicides [4]. Together, these sources indicate that risk is both regional and municipal, but they stop short of producing a standardized city ranking based on population-adjusted rates or comparable time windows.
3. Incident counts versus per-capita rates: Different metrics, different stories
GLAAD’s ALERT Desk tracked 932 anti-LGBTQ incidents nationwide over a 12-month period ending May 1, 2025, and reported that 52% of incidents targeted transgender and gender-nonconforming people [2]. That headline figure captures breadth and trend but does not translate into a city-by-city violence rate. The distinction is crucial: incident tallies measure volume and trend, while per-capita rates better capture relative risk in a specific city—a metric absent from the cited sources. As a result, claims about “which cities have the highest rates” cannot be fully answered from these reports alone [5] [6].
4. Homicides, weapons, and enforcement: What the data make clear
Everytown’s 2023 analysis enumerates 35 homicides of transgender or gender-expansive people, noting 80% were gun-related, and emphasizes the role of firearms in fatal outcomes [3]. The Remembrance and ALERT reports similarly document fatalities and injuries but vary in scope and definitions of what counts as anti-trans violence [1] [2]. These methodological differences produce complementary but not identical tallies: some trackers center lethal violence and race, others catalogue harassment, vandalism, and nonfatal assaults. The intersection of weapons, policing outcomes, and investigative clearance rates emerges as a consistent concern [4] [3].
5. Data gaps and why a city ranking remains elusive
None of the supplied sources provides a transparent, standardized city-by-city rate that adjusts for trans population size, reporting differences, or comparable time frames; GLAAD’s national incident tracker does not break down incidents by city in the public summary, and Everytown focuses on national counts and regional distribution [5] [6] [3]. Local reporting on Chicago offers city-level detail but cannot be generalized without similar municipal audits elsewhere [4]. Consequently, assertions naming specific U.S. cities as having the “highest rates” exceed what these datasets can support.
6. Competing interpretations and advocacy priorities in the reports
Each source advances policy-relevant emphases: the Remembrance Project centers visibility and support for BIPOC trans communities and commemorates lives lost [1]; GLAAD frames rising incidents as part of a broader escalation of anti-LGBTQ hostility and documents nonfatal harms [2]; Everytown emphasizes firearms as a driver of lethal outcomes and calls for gun-safety measures [3]. These differing focuses reflect distinct organizational mandates—memorialization, monitoring harassment, and firearm policy advocacy—so readers should interpret each dataset with awareness of the source’s priorities.
7. What remains to be done: Data fixes and policy-informed next steps
Answering which U.S. cities have the highest rates of violence against trans people requires standardized municipal data: consistent incident definitions, population-adjusted rates for trans people, disaggregated race and gender data, and transparent time windows. Existing reports show clear patterns of disproportionate harm and regional concentration [1] [2] [3] [4], but policymakers and researchers must prioritize harmonized local reporting, improved law-enforcement tracking, and community-led data collection to produce defensible city rankings. Until then, claims about specific cities' “highest rates” should be qualified by these methodological limits [5] [6].