Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer recently signed NAJL member Rep. Noah Arbit’s hate crimes bill into law.
The hate crimes law would expand the ethnic intimidation law to include protections from violent or threatening behavior that is based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age or physical or mental disabilities. Religion, ethnicity, and race were already protected under the ethnic intimidation law and would continue to be protected under the hate crime act.
The law allows a prosecutor to pursue hate crime charges if an individual maliciously and intentionally uses force or violence against a person, causes bodily injury to an individual, stalks a person, damages the property of another or threatens any of those actions based in whole or in part on a person's protected characteristics.
Those protected characteristics under the law include race or color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, ethnicity, national origin or an affiliation with any of those individuals or groups.