Recently there was a malicious verbal and physical attack on 2 transgender youth in my community. Even though there was orientation based slurs thrown at this young couple the DA cannot add the hate crime enhancer to the person that attacked them because of the terminology in the state statute only says sexual orientation and does not include transgender or non binary persons. Offenses like this cannot be allowed to be simply cast as battery, when it’s obvious that the defendant maliciously meant to cause harm to his victims. There’s need for hate crimes like this to be properly identified and brought to justice to bring awareness and a sense of relief for the victims and other members of the community.

This outdated statute needs to be amended and catch up with society and be inclusive of everyone. I'm calling on our law makers to have our state statute mirror the federal statute and include gender and gender identity.