Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick signs TG rights bill into law

[BiBoyinBeantown]

Hooray! :banana:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/20/deval-patrick-massachusetts-governor-transgender-rights-bill_n_1219121.html

The new law makes Mass. the 16th state to recognize transgendered people as a protected class.

[Stavros]

Massachusetts officially became the 16th state to treat transgender citizens as a protected class today as Governor Deval Patrick hosted a ceremonial signing of the groundbreaking rights bill.
As Colorlines is reporting (http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/01/massachusetts_gov_patrick_signs_transgender_equali ty_bill_into_law.html), the law legally protects transgender individuals from discrimination in housing, education, employment and credit, in addition to providing additional civil rights and protections from hate crimes.

What an odd choice of language, its like ranking transgendered people along with the Beaver or the Snail Darter -if citizens of the USA have equal rights, all citizens have them -isn't this covered by anti-discriminatory legislation anyway? Don't understand it.

[fred41]

Massachusetts officially became the 16th state to treat transgender citizens as a protected class today as Governor Deval Patrick hosted a ceremonial signing of the groundbreaking rights bill.
As Colorlines is reporting (http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/01/massachusetts_gov_patrick_signs_transgender_equali ty_bill_into_law.html), the law legally protects transgender individuals from discrimination in housing, education, employment and credit, in addition to providing additional civil rights and protections from hate crimes.

What an odd choice of language, its like ranking transgendered people along with the Beaver or the Snail Darter -if citizens of the USA have equal rights, all citizens have them -isn't this covered by anti-discriminatory legislation anyway? Don't understand it.

Stavros, others have also brought this issue up before ...often in regards to hate crime laws. It's one of those debates that will never quite end. In regards to hate crime laws, usually extra punishment is handed out (often a lot more) - which proponents will argue is a good thing because it will act as a deterrent...which of course is very difficult, if not impossible, to prove.. They do however create a feeling of satisfaction in the vengeance department.

As far as anti discrimination laws heaped on top of anti discrimination laws...we've probably gotten to the point where it becomes necessary to include everything specifically ad nauseum...blanket laws are never seem to be good enough anymore. Often, this is literally true: remember the running joke- "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is..." ? Well that is no longer a joke in this country. As it has been frequently pointed out, we've become a nation of lawyers here in the U.S....for better or worse, depending upon your viewpoint.

[trish]

Fred is right that probably the most popular argument for identifying some crimes as “hate-crimes” and meting out separate punishments for them is the argument from deterrence. If that were the only argument I would probably side with the conservatives on the issue. I take their argument to be something like: if there’s already a law against assault, why have a separate law against sexual assault? Just enforce the law that’s already on the books.

What sways me is a third argument. Certain assaults have more victims than just the obvious victim. For example, when a strangler is loose in a city and he’s strangling just women the primary victims are the unfortunate dead. But you have to know that every woman (and her family) in town is afraid. It’s not only prostitutes who work the night shift. Banks hire men and women to do the books and run the checks at night, and of course many other businesses have night shifts and hire women. Hate crimes terrorize entire communities of people, and for that reason (in my opinion) they should be categorized as crimes that terrorize entire communities and carry additional punishments.

Anti-discrimination laws are a different story, and I also understand the sense of ambivalence one might have towards them. The Constitution guarantees that all laws should apply equally to all persons. But when the Federal Government, the States and municipalities institutionalize segregation in one form or another the precedent is set to interpret the Constitution in a way as to allow that segregation. Even if that's only perception, it would seem legislation is sometimes required to reaffirm and make crystal clear the basic values of our body of law.

[onmyknees]

Massachusetts officially became the 16th state to treat transgender citizens as a protected class today as Governor Deval Patrick hosted a ceremonial signing of the groundbreaking rights bill.
As Colorlines is reporting (http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/01/massachusetts_gov_patrick_signs_transgender_equali ty_bill_into_law.html), the law legally protects transgender individuals from discrimination in housing, education, employment and credit, in addition to providing additional civil rights and protections from hate crimes.

What an odd choice of language, its like ranking transgendered people along with the Beaver or the Snail Darter -if citizens of the USA have equal rights, all citizens have them -isn't this covered by anti-discriminatory legislation anyway? Don't understand it.

You my friend do not understand America Circa 2012, but you're not alone !!!!!

I noticed that language too....strange. Here's what the hate crime legislation in NY has essentially become.( I have to be politically correct here, or they'll thought police will come out of the shadows) If a white crack addict holds up a black guy at gun point for no other reason than both happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and one is a "mark" or opportunity....if the aggressor mutters a racial slur while clubbing him in the head.....that constitutes a hate crime and will get him a extra 5 years on his assault/armed robbery sentence. However if both are white, or both black and the same result occurs...no hate crime. And since you have to issue "qualifiers" on here lest you be labeled a hater, or racist....I understand the need to make those who discriminate criminally and civilly liable, I just thought we already had those laws. If transgendered people were not covered in the original laws...they should have been.

[Stavros]

Thanks to all for the explanations and comment. In the 1980s the elected leader of one of the Labour Councils in London (Linda Bellos) was/is Black, Jewish, Lesbian, Disabled and a Single Mother -I guess in the US that gives her 'protected status' five times over -unless some lawyer decides that Black-Jewish-lesbian-Disabled-Single Parents run the risk of specific crimes and need a distinctive clause in law protecting their status..there comes a point when it ought not be necessary to turn the law inside out to prove a crime has been committed, or to get someone off the charge, but that would probably reduce the opportunities for lawyers to make money.Without wishing to extend this too far, I wonder if an attempt to be precise in law actually makes the process harder; Scottish law is considered more precise than English law, but that doesn't mean a trial in either countries produces a fairer, or a less fair result because of the language of the law.

[trish]

It would be difficult for a strangler to kill six Black-Jewish-lesbian-Disabled-Single Parents and be accused of terrorizing the community of zero remaining Black-Jewish-lesbian-Disabled-Single Parents. At that point I admit, my argument will fail. But I don't think the example diminishes the argument.

You raise an interesting point: is it better for the law to be precise or better for it to be a little bit fuzzy around the edges. I hope my paraphrase doesn't do too much violence to the intent of the question. Precision in natural language is as difficult to achieve as the conceptual analysis of concepts that was sought after by the early analytic philosophers. Still, my off the cuff preference would be to make the law as precise as possible. I don't think the effect of precision will create as many jobs for lawyers as it will for legislatures who will continually see the need to tweak the language to make it say exactly what they meant it to say. Isn't that, in effect, a lot of what legislatures do anyway?

[fred41]

I completely understand your third argument Trish. However it seems to read that because more people fall victim to a particular crime the punishment should be harsher, but to what end if there isn't a proven deterrence?

I'm not sure the average oaf mentality that many of these crimes are perpetrated by...ever consider the years added to the sentence of their crimes in the event they were to be caught. Sometimes it just seems like a feel-good measure created to placate a particular group of people. I don't necessarily have a problem with this because I feel many sentences doled out by judges for violent crimes are far too lenient...
...actually, come to think of it, that is probably a good reason for hate crime laws: They tie the hands of the sentencing judiciary by raising sentence minimums.



I don't think the effect of precision will create as many jobs for lawyers as it will for legislatures who will continually see the need to tweak the language to make it say exactly what they meant it to say. Isn't that, in effect, a lot of what legislatures do anyway?

In fact, that is a significant responsibility of their job.

BTW...I was going to give a knee jerk quote to the effect of : most of the NYS legislature is composed of lawyers anyway...but I just checked that info and it seems that statistically that isn't true anymore. In fact, the percentages seem to be dropping. Who knew? (lol..well, apparently I didn't anyway).

[Stavros]

I completely understand your third argument Trish. However it seems to read that because more people fall victim to a particular crime the punishment should be harsher, but to what end if there isn't a proven deterrence?
I'm not sure the average oaf mentality that many of these crimes are perpetrated by...ever consider the years added to the sentence of their crimes in the event they were to be caught. Sometimes it just seems like a feel-good measure created to placate a particular group of people. I don't necessarily have a problem with this because I feel many sentences doled out by judges for violent crimes are far too lenient...
...actually, come to think of it, that is probably a good reason for hate crime laws: They tie the hands of the sentencing judiciary by raising sentence minimums.


Fred I think there is a difference between people who are victims of crime because they have the property the thief wants to steal, and those who are killed because they are, for example, transgendered =a client injuring or killing a transexual escort.

Fortunately or unfortunately for Ms Bellos, while making this evening's dinner I realised I had forgotten to mention she is also a feminist and a socialist, ergo she might be classified as a Black, Jewish, Lesbian, Feminist, Socialist, Disabled single parent...now I guess I will be attacked for the order in which I placed them....for what its worth I was once influenced -in a positive way- by a German Feminist Socialist Lesbian, London in the 1980s was memorable in so many ways...

[trish]

I completely understand your third argument Trish. However it seems to read that because more people fall victim to a particular crime the punishment should be harsher, but to what end if there isn't a proven deterrence?
I would say the end is justice. If the strangler kills one person he's charged with one murder. If he strangles two he may be charged with two murders and given two independent sentences. If he strangles eight women and terrorizes a city full of women, I see nothing wrong with a system that allows him to be prosecuted eight times for murder and once for terrorizing a community. I would be in favor of laws against hate-crimes that allow that sort of interpretation.

Of course this response presumes that deterrence isn't the sole reason for sentences that include fines and confinements. I have some sympathy with the negation of that presumption, but I'm not there yet. Also I'm not convinced that the families that bring up those "oafs" might not eventually be sufficiently influenced by hate-crime-laws as to do less to instill hatred in their offspring.

[fred41]

Fred I think there is a difference between people who are victims of crime because they have the property the thief wants to steal, and those who are killed because they are, for example, transgendered =a client injuring or killing a transexual escort.

There is already a difference written into most laws...it goes to the degree of a particular law that the perpetrator is going to be prosecuted for (i.e.-murder 1st or murder in 2nd...manslaughter...assault..etc.)..often the penal law already has a way of dealing with motives and intent...but I do see your point.



I would say the end is justice.

That's usually good enough for me...

[hippifried]

The way legislation works, it can esily take a couple hundred pages in the Act to add one line of type to an existing law. Everythinbg affects everything else & you have to cover the overlaps. It sucks that more & more definitions have to be added to basic antidiscrimination laws, but nobody's figured out how else to overcome the "but nobody told me not to" excuse for being an asshole.

As for hate crimes:
Politics has created this huge wall of misunderstanding in regards to this issue. Hate crimes aren't separate crimes. They're a special circumstance added to an existing prosecution in order to add more punishment at sentencing. Basically, to be a hate crime, the victim had to be targeted for who they are or who they're perceived to be. Uttering an epithet during the commission of a crime doesn't make it a hate crime. The special circumstance still has to be proven, & the burdon of proof is still on the prosecution.

It's really too bad that that article was so piss poorly done. None of this creates any new rights for anybody, & rights are never a grant from the government. I haven't read the law itself, but I would imagine that it's a minor expansion of the existing protected class instead of the creation of a new one. This is just a natural progression of the codified legal system of civil rights protection. It'd be nice if none of this was necessary, but does anybody see that on the horizon?

[onmyknees]

"Basically, to be a hate crime, the victim had to be targeted for who they are or who they're perceived to be. Uttering an epithet during the commission of a crime doesn't make it a hate crime. The special circumstance still has to be proven."





You're wrong. Nothing new there. Read the NY Law and stop playing armchair legal scholar. Targeting is one aspect of it, but it's so vaguely written it's being used for a catch all for prosecutors.


Hate” is not an element of New York’s “hate crime” law. You don't have to hate to commit a hate crime. Instead, the law merely requires that you have “a belief or perception” regarding a person’s race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation. (The legislature could have saved a lot of bother by simply saying “a characteristic of a person over which that person has no control.” That’s the policy they’re pursuing, even if they don’t realize it.)
There’s a list of eligible crimes at PL §485.05(3). If you commit one of those crimes, and if you either chose your victim or committed the crime because of such “a belief or perception,” then you are guilty of a hate crime in New York, and now face harsher punishment.
This is a pretty vague statute. You don’t need to have any specific belief or perception about someone, just “a” belief or perception.
The Queens DA’s office — already known (http://burneylawfirm.com/blog/2010/06/07/prosecutorial-extortion/) more for its zeal than for its sense of justice — has now taken that vagueness to its logical extreme. They’ve taken the reductio ad absurdum and made it office policy.

-=-=-=-=-
The New York Times reports (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/nyregion/23hate.html?hp) today that the Queens DA has been going after people who defraud old people, not because of any animus towards old people, but because of a belief about old people. Namely, that old people are easy to defraud.
Ordinarily, such frauds do not carry any mandatory jail time. But if charged as a hate crime, they carry mandatory upstate prison time. Can it be that the legislature really intended this outcome?
By the Queens DA’s logic, every scam targeted at the elderly is a hate crime, because the scam rests on a belief that old folks are easy to scam.
By this same logic, any fake charity targeting Catholics would be a hate crime, because the scam rests on a belief that Catholics would give to that particular charity.
By this same logic, every rape of a woman is a hate crime, because the rape rests on a belief that women have vaginas that can be penetrated.
By this same extreme logic, every murder of a blind person is a hate crime, because the murder rests on a belief that blind people have lives that can be taken.
Of course that’s absurd. This is all absurd. There are already laws on the books dealing with such scams and crimes. There are already penalties thought out and voted on for people who commit scams and rapes and whatever. It cannot be that the legislature intended them to face even more time than the law already gives them.
So what’s going on here?

-=-=-=-=-
What we have here is the legislature failing to get the concept.
The whole point of a hate crime is to impose more severe sentences based on a more severe mens rea.
If you think about it, mens rea is what determines the severity of a crime. For any given criminal act, the more culpable the mental state, the more severely it is punished. Negligence is worse than accident. Knowledge is worse than recklessness. Intent or purposefulness are worse than the rest.
Hate crimes enhance a sentence based on an extra mental state. But unlike the other mental states, the focus isn’t on what you were thinking about your own actions, but what you were thinking about the victim. (See more on all this here (http://burneylawfirm.com/blog/2009/05/01/upcoming-new-hate-crime-law-nothing-wrong-with-the-idea-but-this-one-has-problems/), here (http://burneylawfirm.com/blog/2009/05/11/nat-hentoff-wrong-on-rights-say-it-aint-so/) and here (http://burneylawfirm.com/blog/2009/10/30/why-conservatives-and-defense-lawyers-should-love-the-new-hate-crimes-law/).)
And as pointed out above, it’s got to involve something over which the victim has no control. Nobody can help how they’re made, and it’s wrong to hurt someone because of it. That’s the policy underlying discrimination law, substantive due process, and related jurisprudence. And it’s the same policy underlying hate crime laws.
But there also has to be some animus: You’re targeting old people because you don’t like them, not because they’re more likely to fall for a con. You’re targeting gays because you think they’re bad, not because they’re more likely to have stuff worth burgling. You’re targeting black/white/purple people because you think they deserve it, not because you’ve simply selected them as more likely targets.
That is, after all, the whole point. If you’re mugging Asian people, not because of any animus towards their race, but because you think they’re more likely to carry cash worth taking, then your mens rea isn’t any worse than any other mugger. There’s nothing extra-invidious about your crimes.
This is what New York failed to grasp. The whole policy of hate crimes is to give greater punishment to invidious behavior, yet New York left the whole invidious aspect out of the law. They wrote it into their policy preamble, but left it out of the definition of the crime.
And now it’s being used as a weapon to get mandatory jail time when the legislature clearly contemplated no such thing.

-=-=-=-=-
ADA Kristen Kane, head of the Queens DA’s elder fraud unit, is quoted by the NYT as saying that’s a good thing. “We don’t have a whole lot of tools,” she’s quoted as saying. “We should utilize what the legislature has given us.”
Forgive us, but that’s a load of hooey.
That line “we don’t have a whole lot of tools…” You know what that means? It means she sees her job as something other than what it is. She sees her job as putting people in prison.
There aren’t a lot of tools, it is true, for getting a fraudster mandatory prison time when the amount at issue is less than a million dollars. Because the legislature has not set any mandatory prison time for such crimes.
But there are a lot of tools for doing her actual job, which is to see that the actual law is enforced, and that greater justice is done. She has all the same tools to do that job as any other New York prosecutor. And many of them seem to do their jobs quite well.
When she’s saying “we should utilize what the legislature has given us,” what she’s really saying is “we think the law should impose stiffer sentences here, and we’re willing to take improper advantage of an ambiguity in the statute in order to get stiffer sentences that the legislature never intended.”
Well, that’s not the DA’s job. The legislature may have erred in drafting the law too carelessly, but it is flatly unethical for the DA to misuse the law in this way.
roof is still on the prosecution.

[trish]

You don't have to hate to commit a hate crime.Of course not. "Hate-Crime" is not a descriptor is just a name. A strangler of women, might in fact have no animosity toward women...simply a belief they enjoy being strangled, or deserve being strangled, or any other number of bizarre dispositions toward women. His crime isn't "hatred" his crime is murdering women and terrorizing a community of women and the families that care about them.

[hippifried]

There’s a list of eligible crimes at PL §485.05(3). If you commit one of those crimes, and if you either chose your victim or committed the crime because of such “a belief or perception,” then you are guilty of a hate crime in New York, and now face harsher punishment.
This is a pretty vague statute. You don’t need to have any specific belief or perception about someone, just “a” belief or perception.
& you would define hate differently? This isn't about being pissed off at somebody because they actually did something to you. This isn't about the actions of the targeted victim. It's about the targeting process. Hatred is all about perception. It's based on fear. The fear is almost always based on misperceptions. Recardless of the crime, if the perpetrator targets the victim because of who they are or who they're perceived to be, as opposed to any actions by the specific victim, it's a hate crime.

Statutes like this are vague because no 2 cases are exactly alike, & you can't cover all contingencies with codification. Common law deals with it on a case by case basis. If the prosecution wants to add the hate crime designation to the charge as a special cirvumstance, they have to present it to the grand jury or the judge. Then it has to be presented to the jury. It's the jury that decides whether the designation sticks if it gets that far. None of this is automatic. It all goes to motive. Not just who you target, but why. Intent is already assumed, because the designation only works if the crime is intentional. This doesn't address the heinousness of the crime. That's done via the degree system.

As for the Queens DA: They're just piling on. That's common with prosecutions all over. Throw enough shit out there, & something's bound to stick, or they'll deal. Either way, you get a conviction. The hate crime designation can be dealt away if the perp is stupid enough to think it could stick in the first place, or it actually was a hate crime. It's all just tactical ploys or ways to add more punishment. Like adding 6 months for indecent exposure, consecutive to the rape conviction.