LANSING, Mich. — The Michigan House on Tuesday passed a package of bills to reclassify certain offenses as hate crimes and designate the defacement of synagogues, churches or cemeteries as a crime separate from ordinary destruction of property.
The Michigan Hate Crime Act, which passed 59-50 in the Democratic-controlled House, would replace Michigan's 1988 ethnic intimidation law so that more categories of people fall under the law's protections.
The law would expand to include protections based on sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity or physical or mental disabilities. Religion, ethnicity, and race were already protected under the ethnic intimidation law and would continue to be protected under the hate crime act.
