ATLANTA — The Georgia Senate, and then the House, approved a new hate crime law Tuesday but only after some last-minute changes threatened to derail the process.
The Georgia House originally passed the bill last year.
The new law would include additional penalties and sentences for any crime motivated by a victim’s race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender or disability.
It then sat in a Senate committee, but following calls for racial justice in Georgia and across the country, lawmakers took it up again.
A last-minute amendment to include first responders to the list of protected groups of people was pulled late Monday to clear the way for Tuesday's vote.
At a morning news conference, the bishop of Georgia’s AME church said he was hopeful not only that the bill would pass, but also that it would have bipartisan support.
“And so we’re going to bring unity to this state, then the General Assembly needs to set an example by voting in a bipartisan way to say that we will not tolerate hate and evil in the state of Georgia,” said Bishop Reginald Jackson.
Republican House Speaker David Ralston has supported this bill since last year. It now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.
The governor said he “commends the General Assembly’s bipartisan work and will sign House Bill 426 pending legal review.”
Georgia is one of only four states without hate crime legislation. The Georgia Supreme Court struck down a previous version in 2004 for being too broad.