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Advocates are growing increasingly frustrated as anti-intimidation bills remain stalled in the Michigan Senate, per USA Today.
The Michigan Hate Crime and Institutional Desecration Acts were first introduced by Rep. Noah Arbit, D-West Bloomfield in April. The bills stem from a racially-motivated incident that happened to JeDonna Dinges. In 2021, Dinges' white neighbor put up a Ku Klux Klan flag in a side window that faced her home.
The neighbor didn't face any charges for the incident.
“Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy could not prosecute my former neighbor, because of the way that the ethnic intimidation law is written,” Dinges said. “Prosecutor Worthy said that the ethnic intimidation law in Michigan has no teeth.”
In April 2021, Dinges helped develop the framework for the bills with the help of Attorney General Dana Nessel and the support of prosecutors association of Michigan. The bills were passed in the state House in June and then sent to the Senate, who referred them to the Committee on Civil Rights, Judiciary, and Public Safety.
Advocates say misinformation about the bill has stalled it in the Senate. Critics have claimed that the bill only protects people in the LGBTQ+ community and would fine any individual who intentionally uses the wrong pronouns for a transgender person.
“You have to understand that there's a group of people who are really making a concerted effort to oppose any legislation that even touches the LGBTQ community,” Arbit said. “This bill absolutely touches the LGBTQ+ community, and that's an important dynamic and part of it. But this was never about one community. And that's the narrative that is so important to me to quash in its entirety.”
Arbit said he hopes his tenure in office will help get the bill passed.
“It's why I got involved in politics in the first place, to take on rising hate, violence and extremism," Arbit said. "And strengthening Michigan's hate crime law is my top priority in the legislature.”
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