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:
“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 6:34.
“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)
“If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us as long to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous number of facts which filled them.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“I hate the actor and audience business. An author should be in among the crowd, kicking their shins or cheering them on to some mischief or merriment.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Crimes increase as education, opportunity, and property decrease. Whatever spreads ignorance, poverty and, discontent causes crime.... Criminals have their own responsibility, their own share of guilt, but they are merely the hand.... Whoever interferes with equal rights and equal opportunities is in some ... real degree, responsible for the crimes committed in the community.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“... 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)
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear- headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)