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This case involves a challenge to the constitutionality of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA) in a case in which an Amazon shipping warehouse employee was violently assaulted by a co-worker due to his perceived sexual orientation. The District Court vacated a unanimous jury conviction under the HCPA, on the grounds that the HCPA was an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause power as applied in this case. On appeal, ADL joined an…

The Defendants in this case are challenging the constitutionality of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA). The Anti-Defamation League filed an amicus brief on behalf of 40 nationally-prominent civil rights, human rights, religious, educational and law enforcement organizations urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to uphold the constitutionality of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act and to affirm that it applies to cases in which the…

This case challenges a judge's jury instructions pursuant to a prosecution under the Massachusetts Hate Crimes Penalties Act, where the judge instructed the jury to determine if the defendants acted intentionally and deliberately in assaulting the victim because of his race but didn't instruct that the defendants' bias motive also be a "predominant" or "substantial" reason for the assault. ADL's brief urges the Court to uphold the judge's jury instructions and not insert a "predominant" or …

In a 2009 trial, DeLee was convicted of first-degree manslaughter as a hate crime, under New York State’s hate crime law, a law patterned after ADL's Model Law. The jury also found DeLee not guilty on a second count, which was described to the jury as including manslaughter "but not as a hate crime." DeLee's attorneys appealed the verdict, arguing that the two verdicts contradicted each other and that therefore the conviction should be reversed. The Appellate Division agreed and on a 4-1…