Written Assignment #7 - GOVT 2305 - 11 week online class only

A jury in the state of Florida acquitted George Zimmerman of charges of murder and manslaughter in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin - in case you've been living under a rock - but this may not be the end of the story.

Which give us an opportunity to tie recent subject matter - civil rights - to this case.

The NYT reports that the U.S. Justice Department is considering filing federal hate crimes charges against Zimmerman. The applicable law is the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 (see Wikipedia entry here) which builds on federal hate crime law dating back to 1968. These laws allow the federal government to prosecute people who commit crimes based on a variety factors including a person's race.

Originally the laws only applied to those attempting to limit a "victim's attempt to engage in one of six types of federally protected activities, such as attending school, patronizing a public place/facility, applying for employment, acting as a juror in a state court or voting." The Shepard Act expanded protected categories to sexual orientation, and removed the requirement that a federally protected activity be affected.

This suggests that the shooting of Martin may fall under the scope of this law, though that is not conclusive and the Justice Department has yet to determine whether there is enough evidence to prosecute.

Your writing assignment this week is to read through existing hate crime laws mentioned, review the facts associated with the shooting of Trayvon Martin and determine whether there is enough evidence to warrant a federal charge. What makes this a civil rights issue - or not? Consider both sides of the argument, be objective.

You know the requirements.

Drawing the Line Between Free Speech and Bullying

Wendy Kaminer is not a fan of legislation introduced in the Senate that addresses bullyign on school campuses:

There's no dearth of important issues for Congress to address in the lame-duck session, but New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg has introduced an entirely gratuitously anti-harassment bill anyway--The Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act of 2010. (Congressman Rush Holt introduced the same bill in the House.) Federal civil rights law has long prohibited harassment in schools receiving federal funds; Tyler Clementi was not the victim of harassment or any absence of rules against it: his suicide followed a gross and apparently criminal violation of privacy--the secret taping and broadcast of his sexual encounter with another male. So, there's no need for this bill and no sense in naming it after Clementi--unless you're intent on emotionally blackmailing people into supporting it. Naming legislation after a victim cuts off debate, daring opponents to risk appearing insensitive to the sufferings of survivors.

But this bill is not simply redundant; it's repressive, proposing a subjective definition of harassment that's more restrictive of speech and more likely to be applied arbitrarily than the definition formulated by the Supreme Court some 10 years ago. You can find a concise critique of the bill at thefire.org, which stresses that "the bill removes the requirement that the (alleged harassment) be objectively offensive... The bill also fails to define what constitutes a "hostile or abusive" educational environment, leaving that determination to college administrators"--administrators who have proven themselves oblivious or hostile to free speech, as a lamentably long list of FIRE's cases show.

Justifying Hate Crimes Law Circa 2001

I'm not sure what the precise differences are between the current legislation and the one debated in 2001, but here's the Senate Committee report justifying the bill, plus background from one of the staffers who helped draft the bill.