Apple received the highest possible score on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2019 Corporate Equality Index. This means it took steps to provide greater equity for LGBTQ workers and their families.
It’s one of 571 businesses earning the CEI’s top score of 100, meeting new and higher benchmarks.
“The top-scoring companies on this year’s CEI are not only establishing policies that affirm and include employees here in the United States, they are applying these policies to their global operations and impacting millions of people beyond our shores,” said HRC President Chad Griffin. “Many of these companies have also become vocal advocates for equality in the public square, including the dozens that have signed on to amicus briefs in vital Supreme Court cases and the more than 180 that have joined HRC’s Business Coalition for the Equality Act.”
Apple is member of this coalition, which seeks federal legislation to provide the same basic protections to LGBTQ people as other protected groups.
These efforts have a proponent at Apple’s very top: Tim Cook was the first openly gay Fortune 500 CEO.
Other companies on the Corporate Equality Index
A number of other large tech companies also scored 100 on the CEI index. This includes, Facebook, AT&T, Amazon, and Verizon.
Google is a special case; the Human Rights Campaign didn’t give this company a rating because the Play Store contains an app that offers “conversion therapy” to supposedly change someone’s sexual identity. Apple removed the iOS version from the App Store last year.
