www.GoodMornigGwinnett.com Georgia lawmakers reached across the aisle Tuesday to pass a contentious hate-crimes bill that aims to protect people in the Peach State from acts of violence or property damage perpetrated because of the victim’s race, sex or gender.
House Bill 426 was pushed through the Senate after stalling there for more than a year, following its passage out of the state House of Representatives in March of 2019. It then gained final passage in the House less than an hour later by an overwhelming vote, 127-38.
Through tears, Rep. Calvin Smyre, the General Assembly’s longest serving member, proclaimed after the vote that co-sponsoring the hate-crimes bill was his finest act as a lawmaker in Georgia.
“I’ve had a lot, a lot, a lot of moments in my career,” said Smyre, D-Columbus, whose tenure spans nearly five decades in the legislature. “But today is my finest.”
The bill designates hate crimes as an enhancement to charges that prosecutors have discretion to bring, not as standalone offenses. It specifies hate crimes as those targeting a victim based on “race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender, mental disability or physical disability.”
It would restore hate-crimes protections enacted in Georgia in 2000 that were stripped out of state law in 2004 by the Georgia Supreme Court, which ruled lawmakers did not clearly define a hate crime.
Rep. Chuck Efstration, who sponsored the legislation, reflected on the historic nature of the bill, which if signed by Gov. Brian Kemp would make Georgia no longer one of four states in the U.S. that does not have a hate-crimes law on the books.
SOURCE:
www.GwinnettDailyPost.com#Podcast, #DailyHoroscopes, #Audrey Bell-Kearney
