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Hate Crimes Legislation- Are They Constitutional?

© Joy Johnston

Hate crimes capture the public's attention with a morbid fascination. Grisly cases such as James Byrd, the black man dragged to his death by white supremacists, and Matthew Shepard, the gay man beaten and tied to a fence, left to die, are a moral outrage to any decent minded citizen. Legislators have felt pressured in the light of such high-profile cases to pass laws designed to punish those who commit crimes out of prejudice more severely than those who commit crimes simply out of greed or drug addiction or mental instability. This "feel good" legislation is popular with the masses. But good intentions don't necessarily make good laws, or even constitutional laws. Libertarians take the unpopular viewpoint that most hate crimes laws are at the least, ineffective in thwarting the crimes they claim to want to deter, and at the worst, are unconsitutional.

The most glaring inadequacy of hate crimes legislation is that it allows the government to place a particular value on an individual's life, simply because they are a member of a particular group of people. This creates a hierarchy system of victims, leading to discrimination and bias when handing out penalties for criminal sentences, the very thing that hate crimes legislation is supposed to fight against. If a white woman is raped by a black man who says nothing during the attack and a black woman is raped by a white man who yell racial epithets at her during the attack, only the second case would be considered a hate crime under current federal and state hate crimes legislation. One would be hard pressed to explain to the white woman why her attacker is going to get a 1/3 less of a prison sentence, compared to the black woman's attacker, according to federal sentencing guidelines for hate crimes.

Or what about the example of a robber who mugs and kills a white man in a business suit, while getting out of his Lexus, versus the mugging and murder of a Jewish man exiting a synagogue? The first robber states that he sought that particular white male because he looked like he was rich. The second robber is an anti-Semite. Are the wealthy the next class to ask for hate crimes protection? It may seem ludricous, but are they not targeted inproportion to the poor for robberies and muggings, because they are perceived to have more valuable possessions? Following current trends, the wealthy should be a protected class under hate crimes legislation.

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