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Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2021 - 2022
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | December 1, 2020 11:22 AM |
|---|---|
| From: | Senator Timothy P. Kearney and Sen. Anthony H. Williams, Sen. Lindsey M. Williams |
| To: | All Senate members |
| Subject: | Hate-Based Intimidation |
| In the near future, we plan to introduce legislation to modernize Pennsylvania's Hate Crimes Statute, currently known as “Ethnic Intimidation”. This legislation recognizes that hate crimes are not limited to attacks based upon a person’s ethnicity and renames the statute “Hate-based Intimidation”. Hate-based intimidation includes attempting to cause or causing bodily injury, property damage, or threatening either causing reasonable fear of harm. This legislation protects anyone from the crime of hate-based intimidation based on race, color, religion, or national origin, and adds those same protections for hate-based intimidation based on ancestry, sex, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, intellectual disability, physical or sensory disability or behavioral or mental health. Over the past few years, hate-based acts of violence and destruction of property have dramatically risen across the US, including in Pennsylvania. Our current hate crimes statutes do no capture growing shares of identity-motivated violence. As civic leaders, we believe that we should unite in this effort to restore civility to public discourse, and that starts with naming hate-based intimidation and violence. Please join me in protecting our constituents and ensuring that hate has no home in Pennsylvania. |
Introduced as SB63