B’nai B’rith International welcomes the Senate passage of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The legislation would enable greater federal involvement to investigate and punish hate crimes. Matthew Shepard was a gay student at the University of Wyoming who was left to die after he was tied to a fence and beaten in 1998.
The legislation would designate as hate crimes those offenses motivated by gender identity, sexual orientation, gender, and mental and physical disability. It would also provide grants for state and local authorities to investigate and prosecute hate crimes, and would empower the federal government to prosecute cases if states asked for help or were reluctant to exercise their own authority.
B’nai B’rith has worked on behalf of expanded hate crimes legislation since it was first proposed a decade ago.
“This expansion of federal hate crimes laws affords protection to groups long disenfranchised from the system,” said B’nai B’rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin. “This new measure means the most vulnerable in our society have an important new cloak of protection. Law enforcement agencies at all levels will now be able to punish hate crimes with the full backing of the U.S. government.”
The House has already passed a similar measure. We urge the House and Senate to quickly reconcile their versions of the legislation. President Obama has promised to sign a hate crimes bill into law.
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