Virginia State House – Photo: Farragutful, via Wikimedia.
The Virginia General Assembly has defeated a bevy of bills that deal with bias-motivated crimes, particularly those that target LGBTQ victims, even as the number of anti-LGBTQ homicides hit a record high last year.
Last Friday, the House Courts of Justice’s Subcommittee #1 defeated two bills dealing with so-called “hate crimes.” Del. Ken Plum (D-Reston) introduced a bill that would have added gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability to the categories of victims whose attacks can be recognized as hate crimes. That means that offenders can be charged with bias enhancements, or subject to harsher penalties, if prosecutors choose to pursue additional prison time on top of the underlying murder or assault charges.
Del. Rip Sullivan (D-McLean) introduced a separate bill that would have required the reporting of hate crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity to the Virginia State Police. Law enforcement authorities are already reporting such statistics to the FBI, and law enforcement authorities have consistently supported similar bills patroned by Sullivan during past legislative sessions.
Both Plum’s bill and Sullivan’s bill were defeated on party-line votes, 4-3, with Republicans voting to table them, in that subcommittee. Del. Les Adams (R-Chatham) was absent.
The Courts of Justice Subcommittee has not yet voted on HB 10 or HB 266, identical measures that combine Plum and Sullivan’s bills into one, but both are expected to be defeated on party-line votes.
Earlier in the session, the Republican-controlled Senate behaved similarly, defeating a bill patroned by Sen. Barbara Favola (D-Arlington) that sought to expand the classes of victims that are covered by Virginia’s current hate crime laws. The bill, which sought to add gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity to the hate crimes law, was defeated in the Courts of Justice Committee on a party-line 9-6 vote.
The General Assembly’s actions come at a time when anti-LGBTQ hate crimes are on the rise, constituting the third most common type of hate crime in the nation. A recent report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects found that there were 52 reported anti-LGBTQ homicides in 2017, the highest number ever recorded, and an 86% increase from the number of LGBTQ murders in 2016.
Recently, a jury convicted a man from Chester, Va., on federal hate crime charges after he assaulted a co-worker he thought was gay at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in May 2015. James William Hill III admitted to an Amazon manager and to police that he dislikes gay people, and that gay people should expect to be assaulted because of their sexual orientation, reports WRIC.
Hill could face up to 10 years in prison when he’s sentenced later this year. Ironically, though, Hill’s punishment would likely be less severe had he been charged with assault and prosecuted under the commonwealth’s criminal laws, due to the General Assembly’s refusal — and therefore, the commonwealth’s — to admit the existence of crimes motivated by anti-LGBTQ animus.
The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to enforce a policy mandating that U.S. passports list a traveler’s sex as assigned at birth, based on biological characteristics.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the U.S. government would recognize only two sexes, effectively erasing transgender identity. The order, which pledged to uphold "the biological reality of sex," directed the State Department to revise its passport policies to "accurately reflect the holder's sex."
A 14-year-old eighth-grade student in Arizona was forcibly removed from boys' basketball tryouts because school district officials refuse to recognize him as a boy due to an error on his original birth certificate.
Laker Jackson attends Eastmark High School, a grades 7-12 campus in Mesa, Arizona, and had spent a year training to make the basketball team. But district officials refused to treat the cisgender teen as a boy because the gender marker on his original birth certificate, used during enrollment, lists his sex as female.
The mix-up dates back 14 years, when hospital staff mistakenly listed Laker as female on his birth certificate. His parents, who have six children, say they never noticed the error until enrolling him at Eastmark last year.
Two 20-year-old men have been accused of plotting a deadly terrorist attack in suburban Detroit, allegedly targeting several LGBTQ bars after purchasing high-powered weapons, stockpiling ammunition, and practicing at local gun ranges.
According to an FBI affidavit, Mohmed Ali and Majed Mahmoud, both 20 and from Dearborn, allegedly conspired with at least five unnamed individuals and a minor -- identified as "Person 1" -- to carry out an ISIS-inspired shooting attack on Halloween night. Prosecutors say Ali and Person 1 were to execute the assault while the others planned to travel to Syria to join Islamic State forces.
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