HEALTH COACH - Gay attacks not covered by West Virginia Hate Crime Law, rules of the court

HEALTH COACH - 
 Gay attacks not covered by West Virginia Hate Crime Law, rules of the court   
 

 This consideration seemed to weigh heavily on the court too. In his view, Loughry J. stated that the decision was based in part on the history of the State Legislature on resistance to the addition of sexual orientation to its Hate crime, a change that has been proposed and rejected 26 times since 1993. West Virginia is one of six Affirmes with a hate crime law that includes sex in its protections but not sexual orientation Or gender identity. 


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 The attack on the heart of the West Virginia case occurred in April 2015, when prosecutors declared that Steward Butler, then a runner with the football team of the 39 Marshall University, attacked two men, Casey Williams and Zackary Johnson, after seeing them kissing in public. The prosecutors said that Mr. Butler shouted homophobic insults from his car, and then hit them in their faces, knocking one of them. 
 
 Sir. Butler was expelled from the football team and was charged with two counts of fraud and two criminal offenses. The battery charge has not yet been tested. Law enforcement officials said the decision Tuesday would lead their case to a lower court where it will only face charges against the faults. 


 Phone calls to the office of Mr. Butler 's lawyer, Raymond Nolan, did not respond on Thursday. 
 
 Greg Nevins, a lawyer with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, who filed an amicus brief in the case, said the plaintiffs argued that the men were attacked for violating a standard or A gender stereotype. 
 
 "Put it this way: if you congratulate a man because he marries a woman and you shoot a woman because she marries a woman, it is discrimination based on Sex, "Nevins said. "We must focus on this crime if the victims had a different sex" 
 
 Mr. Nevins stated that this was the first time such an argument had been made in a state - level hate crime case. The federal Hate Crime Act explicitly protects against crimes committed on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. 
 
 In recent years, gay and transgender advocacy groups have won a series of anti-discrimination cases in areas such as employment, housing and education arguing that Federal laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, in particular Title VII and Title IX, also cover discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. 
 
 But this approach has not always been effective. In March, the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that Jameka Evans, a lesbian, could not sue her employer for anti-gay discrimination under Title VII of the Human Rights Act Civilians of 1964. 
 
 Attacks on Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons account for about 20 percent of reported bias and harassment attacks to law enforcement agencies, according to statistics compiled by The FBI in 2015. These episodes included assault, intimidation, vandalism, murder and rape. 
 
 Robin Maril, Associate Legal Director of the Human Rights Campaign, L.G.B.T. Human Rights Group, said West Virginia's decision was not consistent with "the broad legal path we see before the courts" to include both sexuality and sexuality, Gender identity under legal protections based on sex, particularly in the context of the Anti-Discrimination Act. 
 
 "This is very, very disturbing with the levels of violence against the L.G.B.T. Community to see the Supreme Court of West Virginia exclude this option for victims and prosecutors," she said. 
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