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United States Senate Passes NAACP-Supported Hate Crime Prevention Bill

The Issue:
On September 27, 2007, the United States Senate passed the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act; legislation passed by the House less than 5 months earlier. 

Specifically, the Senate first voted 60 yeas to 39 nays in support of “cloture” which ended debate and allowed the bill to move forward.  The Senate then passed the legislation by voice vote as an amendment to the Department of Defense authorization bill.  The House of Representatives passed a free-standing Hate Crimes bill in May of this year; differences between the two bills must now be worked out and a final version of the legislation will hopefully be presented to the President for his signature soon.  Unfortunately, the President has threatened to veto the legislation calling it “unnecessary,” but the NAACP has vowed to work hard over the next few months to try to change his mind.

Currently, the federal government is allowed to intervene in the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes only if they occur on federal property or if the victim was participating in one of six very specific activities, such as voting.  The “Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act” would expand existing hate crime prevention laws and allow the federal government to assist the local authorities in the investigation and prosecution of crimes motivated by hate, regardless of what the victim was doing at the time the crime occurred.  It would also expand the definition of a hate crime to include those motivated by the victim’s disability, gender or sexual orientation and it would provide money to states to develop hate crime prevention programs. 

In short, this proposed hate crimes prevention legislation would allow the federal government to work with state and local authorities to punish hate crimes to the fullest extent possible.  While the NAACP believes that states should continue to play the primary role in the prosecution of hate crime violence, a federal law is needed to compliment state statutes and assist the states in securing the very complicated and expensive cases through prosecution.

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