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Legislation would address rising hate crimes though increased funding and reporting mechanisms
New York, NY, April 22, 2021... ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) praised the U.S. Senate’s bipartisan passage of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act as well as the Khalid Jabara and Heather Heyer National Opposition to Hate, Assault, and Threats to Equality Act (Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act), both of which ADL has supported extensively.
The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act would address the rise in hate crimes and violence targeted at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) by assigning a point person at the Department of Justice (DOJ) to expedite the review of COVID-19-related hate crimes, providing support for state and local law enforcement agencies to respond to these hate crimes, and coordinating with local and federal partners to mitigate racially discriminatory language used to describe the pandemic.
The NO HATE Act would address the disturbing increase in hate crimes in the United States through improved reporting of such crimes, encouraging law enforcement prevention, training, and education on hate crimes, establishing a hate crime hotline and rehabilitating perpetrators of hate crimes though education and community service.
“Hate crimes are not just an attack on a single person, but on an entire community,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “These bills reflect the growing consensus across America that enough is enough: there is no place hate in our communities. Understanding and addressing the root causes of hate crimes has been core to our work for decades, and the resources in these bills would significantly build on the progress we’ve made. We thank the bills’ sponsors for recognizing the importance of these issues and urge the U.S. House of Representatives to move quickly to pass these pieces of legislation.”
ADL and its partners in the civil rights community have advocated tirelessly for these bills, including by organizing petitions in support, which have garnered thousands of signatures to date in response to a wave of hate crimes targeting members of the AAPI community across the country and other recent hate crimes targeting Jews, Latinos and the LGBTQ community, among others.
This recent work builds on ADL’s longstanding leadership on combating hate crimes: ADL crafted the first model hate crime legislation in America, and 46 states plus the District of Columbia now have laws based on or similar to ADL’s model. The organization also led the large coalition of organizations that ultimately spearheaded the passage of the landmark Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009, which established a federal hate crimes law.
ADL’s interactive hate crime map includes FBI hate crime data from 2004-2019 for all 50 states and for large cities, and includes links to every hate crime law on the books in the country. The tool gives users the ability to explore information by targeted, protected characteristics at the national, statewide and city level.