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Hate crimes are crimes committed because of the victim's race, gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or other protected status. The federal government, most states, and many localities have enacted laws or regulations to define such acts as separate crimes in themselves or to augment penalties for existing crimes when motivated by hatred or bias. Because definitions vary across jurisdictions, acts as disparate as lynching, assault while calling the victim derogatory names, cross burning, or making intimidating threats on the basis of the victim's race or other protected status might be considered hate crimes. Whatever the definition, statistics show that incidences of hate crime were on the rise in the late twentieth century.

On the federal level there is no hate crime law per se, though legislative efforts to enact such a law came close to succeeding in the late 1990s. Prior to 1994, federal prosecutors combating hate crimes depended primarily on civil rights statutes, including those protecting voting activities, fair housing, and the enjoyment of public accommodations. In 1994 Congress added to federal authority to prosecute hate crimes by providing sentence enhancements for any existing federal offense if the defendant selected the victim "because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation" of the victim. Also in 1994, Congress passed the Violence against Women Act, which provided a civil cause of action for gender-motivated violence. The Supreme Court, however, voted 5 to 4 in United States v. Morrison (2000) to strike down the relevant provisions as being outside Congress's legislative authority under the commerce clause and the Fourteenth Amendment.

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, nearly every state enacted a hate crime law of some kind. Most of these statutes took the form of sentence enhancements for existing crimes. Others defined new substantive criminal offenses or created new private causes of action.

Hate crime statutes raise a number of serious policy and legal questions. Some critics believe that hate crime statutes pose serious First Amendment difficulties by distinguishing among criminals based on their beliefs. Other critics charge that the statutes are unconstitutionally vague or send the inappropriate message that crimes committed for reasons other than bias are not as serious. Supporters of hate crime statutes assert that the constitutional concerns can be surmounted and that the statutes are necessary to make clear society's strong belief that bias-motivated crimes are particularly detrimental to the social fabric.

Some of the constitutional issues raised by hate crime statutes were the focus of two Supreme Court cases in the early 1990s. In R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992), the Court struck down a local ordinance that outlawed placing on public or private property a symbol or object likely to arouse "anger, alarm, or resentment … on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender." The defendant had been charged under the ordinance after burning a cross in the yard of an African American family. Even though the "speech" at issue fell into the analytical category of "fighting words," which the Court had previously maintained was of low constitutional value, the Court held that the ordinance was viewpoint based and thus facially unconstitutional.

Source: answers.com
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