Obama Set To Sign Bill Widening Hate Crime Laws

For the first time, the law that had previously protected people from attacks motivated by race, religion or ethnicity will include gay, lesbian, transgender and disabled people.

As Tom Perez, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, told WAMU's Kojo Nnamdi Show, "This bill was first introduced in 1996, and I had the privilege of working for Sen. [Edward] Kennedy at the time when the bill was being drafted, so it has been a 13-year marathon."

Even so, many of the people who have worked hardest for the bill's passage do not expect many more people to be charged with federal hate crimes under the law.

(...) State and local officials have always handled the majority of hate crime prosecutions, and that is not expected to change. The offenses are the kinds of assaults and muggings that local officials prosecute every day, but with different motivations. People who oppose hate crime laws say the federal government should have left it that way.

But this new law lets the Justice Department get involved in ways beyond merely charging people with crimes. Now the federal government can help state and local officials tackle hate crimes by providing them with federal investigators, forensic tools and money.