Mercury News: South Bay Lawmaker's Bill Aims to Bolster Hate Crime Charges

A South Bay assemblymember is looking to expand the state’s definition of a hate crime, a pursuit he says will ensure that crimes targeting populations like Asian Americans and LGBTQ+ people are fully prosecuted when bias is evident but not demonstrated explicitly enough to satisfy existing legal thresholds.

Evan Low, D-Campbell, is pushing Assembly Bill 1064, which would add “bias motivation” and “selective targeting” components to the statutory description of a hate crime. He says the idea is to empower law enforcement and prosecutors to pursue hate crime investigations by making it more likely that charges get in front of juries rather than get dismissed in pretrial stages.

“Our community has been suffering,” Low said in an interview. “Many of the cases we’ve seen, the individual did not shout out a specific slur, but we know by the consistency of the targeted individuals that selective targeting exists. That evidence of bias is important for juries to consider.”