The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act, is an American Act of Congress, passed on October 22, 2009, and signed into law by President Barack Obama on October 28, 2009, as a rider to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2010 (H.R. 2647). Conceived as a response to the murders of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., the measure expands the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
The bill also:
- removes the prerequisite that the victim be engaging in a federally protected activity, like voting or going to school;
- gives federal authorities greater ability to engage in hate crimes investigations that local authorities choose not to pursue;
- provides $5 million per year in funding for fiscal years 2010 through 2012 to help state and local agencies pay for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes;
- requires the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to track statistics on hate crimes based on gender and gender identity (statistics for the other groups were already tracked).
The Act is the first federal law to extend legal protections to transgender people.
Read more about Matthew Shepard And James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act: Origin, Background, Opposition, Legislative History, Enforcement, Court Challenge
Famous quotes containing the words matthew, shepard, james, hate, crimes, prevention and/or act:
“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 10:40.
Jesus.
“Getting emotional about things is a peacetime luxury. In wartime, it’s much too painful.”
—Edmund H. North, British screenwriter, and Lewis Gilbert. Captain Shepard (Kenneth More)
“There can be no difference anywhere that doesn’t make a difference elsewhere—no difference in abstract truth that doesn’t express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere, and somewhen.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“I hate to say it, Cory, but as a pool player you make a fine speedboat mechanic.”
—Blake Edwards (b. 1922)
“The form of act or thought mattered nothing. The hymns of David, the plays of Shakespeare, the metaphysics of Descartes, the crimes of Borgia, the virtues of Antonine, the atheism of yesterday and the materialism of to-day, were all emanation of divine thought, doing their appointed work. It was the duty of the church to deal with them all, not as though they existed through a power hostile to the deity, but as instruments of the deity to work out his unrevealed ends.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“... if this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would be a of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“In a democracy dissent is an act if faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but its effects.”
—J. William Fulbright (1905–19)