Florida Senate Committee approves update to hate crimes law

Equality Florida announced today (Tuesday, Feb. 6) that the state’s Senate Criminal Justice Committee passed has passed a bill providing “essential updates to Florida’s hate crime statutes.”

As written, Sen. Kevin Rader’s “extends critical protections to both the disability and transgender communities and addresses ‘mixed motive’ loopholes to [deal with] crimes that escalate to hate motivated attacks,” according to an Equality Florida press release.

Equality Florida Government Affairs Manager Jon Harris Maurer noted, “Adding disability and gender-related hate crimes to Florida’s law is long overdue. The transgender community, especially transgender women of color, are disproportionately the targets of victims of hate-motivated violence,” adding that his organization “applauds” Criminal Justice Committee Chair Randolph Bracy and the majority on the committee for the vote.

According to the most recent report from the Florida Attorney General, there were 124 hate crimes in reported in Florida in 2016, a 21.6 percent increase from 2015. But because of gaps in the state’s hate crimes law, that number doesn’t include hate crimes committed because of certain physical disabilities, gender or gender identity, or “mixed motive” hate crimes.

Read more: https://www.dallasvoice.com/florida-senate-committee-approves-update-hate-crimes-law-10248960.html