Hanson plans to introduce hate crime legislation

The 2018 legislative session begins on January 8 and one Georgia lawmaker says she’s planning on introducing legislation to expand the definition of hate crimes in Georgia.

State Representative Meagan Hanson, a Republican attorney from Brookhaven, announced Wednesday that she will carry a bill to increase punishments for crimes committed against persons in certain classifications.

Hanson says the legislation would aim to match the federal protections in place, which cover protected classes of people based on race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, mental disability and physical disability and provided additional punishments for crimes committed against anyone from those groups.

In a press conference Wednesday, Hanson said the law is needed to combat “an increase in the resurgence of tribal-based animosities that are motivated solely by group relationships over the past year.”

“Attacks that are motivated by hate for a group are different from typical crimes aimed at individual targets, and they are designed to create fear among those people in that group and oppress the entire community,” Hanson said.

WMAZ reported the bill has been pre-filed, but as of Thursday morning, it was not on the House website, which means complete details are not yet available to the public. If passed, Georgia would join 45 other states in the nation that have state-level hate crimes in place. Georgia previously passed a measure back in 2004, but it was blocked by the state Supreme Court for being too vague. Arkansas, Indiana, South Carolina, and Wyoming are the only other states without hate crime legislation.

WABE noted in their article on the story that Hanson has drawn two opponents in her district for 2018, one of whom is an openly gay Democrat. The outlet also linked to Tweets from 2011 and 2013 in questioning her timing of dropping the bill. Hanson’s district is considered ‘moderate’ and has teetered back and forth between Republican and Democrat control in recent years. Even still, in November of 2017, crimes against transgender persons, and other hate crimes, were reported to be ‘on the rise’ in the Peach State.

Georgia passed legislation in 2017 to enhance punishments for crimes committed against police officers and in the previous year, to harm police K9s, but despite some increase in crimes against certain persons, hate crime legislation has taken considerable criticism in recent years as some have said the “underlying laws violate the foundations of American justice.”