Sec. 2. Findings
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The Congress finds as follows: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (referred to in this section as the FBI ) defines a hate crime as a criminal offense—such as murder, arson, or vandalism—against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, color, national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity. Forty-six States and the District of Columbia have statutes criminalizing various types of bias-motivated violence or intimidation.
Congress has enacted various statutes to address hate crimes since 1968, with the most recent statute, the COVID–19 Hate Crimes Act ( Public Law 117–113 ; 135 Stat. 265), enacted in 2021. In 2021, the FBI reported 10,840 single-bias incidents, an increase of nearly 12 percent from 2020. Hate crimes not only damage the individual victim or victims, but also traumatize entire communities and erode public confidence in their safety. In 2021— 64.5 percent of victims were targeted because of the offender's race, ethnicity, or ancestry bias; 15.9 percent of victims were targeted because of the offender's sexual orientation bias; 14.1 percent of victims were targeted because of the offender's religious bias; 3.2 percent of victims were targeted because of the offender's gender identity bias; 1.4 percent of victims were targeted because of the offender's disability bias; and 1 percent of victims were targeted because of the offender's gender bias.
In testimony before the Committee on Homeland Security of the House of Representatives in September 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray said, Within the domestic terrorism bucket, the category as a whole, racially motivated violent extremism is, I think, the biggest bucket within that larger group. And within the racially motivated violent extremist bucket, people subscribing to some kind of white supremacist-type ideology is certainly the biggest chunk of that. . In August 2012, a shooting at the gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, left 6 people dead, and a seventh victim of the shooting succumbed to his injuries in 2020.
In October 2018, a shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, left 11 people dead. In July 2019, a Hindu priest in New York City was hospitalized after a man attacked him and screamed this is my neighborhood during the incident. In August 2019, an assailant entered a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, to target Hispanic immigrants and left 22 people dead. In November 2020, a woman shouted anti-Muslim slurs and attacked a couple in New York City, leaving one victim needing surgery for facial fractures.
In March 2021, a gunman targeted 3 spas across Atlanta, Georgia, killing 8 people, 6 of whom were Asian women. In May 2022, a gunman injured 3 people after entering a Korean-owned business in Dallas, Texas, and firing 13 rounds before fleeing. In May 2022, a gunman targeted a Tops supermarket located in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 people and injuring 3 others. Of the 13 victims, 11 were Black. In November 2022, a gunman killed 5 people and wounded 25 others after opening fire on an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
In response to the COVID–19 pandemic, Asian Americans have suffered an increasing number of hate crimes. According to Stop AAPI Hate, nearly 11,500 hate incidents toward Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were reported between March 2020 and March 2022. The Anti-Defamation League (commonly known as the ADL ) annually surveys and reports anti-Semitic hate incidents across the country. In 2022, the ADL reported a 36-percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents compared to 2021.
In the original 2021 Hate Crime Statistics published by the FBI in December 2022, the FBI acknowledged the significant discrepancy in reporting from local law enforcement agencies as a result of transitioning to the National Incident-Based Reporting System. Due to the lack of reporting by local enforcement agencies, the FBI acknowledged that the 2021 Hate Crime Statistics cannot be compared reliably across years. In March 2023, the FBI released supplemental data for the 2021 Hate Crime Statistics consisting of data collected through the Summary Reporting System by local law enforcement agencies.
There is a clear need for stronger action to accurately report and effectively combat hate-based attacks.
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