The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill by for the year late last month. Four Democrats strayed from party lines to vote against the bill after much debate.
Navigation menu
The current statute defines hate crime victims as those who are maliciously targeted based on race, religion, gender, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation or ethnicity. Legislators passed the legislation last year during the General Assembly session. Rogers, an avowed high-ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan, drove his truck into a crowd of protesters. She said Rogers drove his truck with the intention to disrupt the protests.
Vee Lamneck, the executive director of Equality Virginia, said hate crimes are more than acts of violence.
Such crimes are committed with the intention of inciting fear and dehumanizing groups, Lamneck said. Senator Chap Petersen D-Fairfax said during the committee hearing that the bill was a massive expansion of the current statute. Opponents, including the Virginia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the bill was too broad and could allow for the exploitation of who was a hate crime victim.
Legislators pondered Hatw if this meant a person of color could be charged with a hate crime for assaulting a white person and postulated several scenarios of how the bill could be misused. Emanuel Harris, a representative for the Black Coalition for Change, called the questioning of the protection of white supremacists puzzling, offensive and laughable.
Harris said the original statute needs to be expanded. Joseph Morrissey D-Richmond. Meredith R.]
I am am excited too with this question. You will not prompt to me, where I can read about it?