Louisiana has taken the national lead in protecting police, firefighters and emergency responders under hate crime laws. One national youth civil rights group is now working on making sure other states don’t take that same step.
When Governor John Bel Edwards signed the bill into law last week, he said public safety workers deserve every protection available.
Critics say they already have them.
Raphael Goyeneche of the Metropolitan Crime Commission:
“The Louisiana hate crime laws protect all citizens that are victimized by virtue of their race, gender, age, sexual orientation or their employment with any organization," he said. "The existing law defines any organization as any entity or unit of the federal, state or local government.”
Anneke Dunbar-Gronke of the Black Youth Project 100 says the state bill by Republican Representative Lance Harris of Alexandria received little review.
“We just want to make sure that in the way that we saw bathroom bills -- or bills around who is allowed to use which bathrooms – start in North Carolina and kind of spread across the South, we want to make sure that that doesn’t happen with this kind of bill," she said.
She says the law will affect marginalized communities that already feel intimidated by police.
The New Orleans Police Department took no position on Harris’ bill.